


Whale Watching

by Pan (Wingedchester_67)



Category: South Park
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe Mermaids, M/M, Mermaids, animal activists
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:41:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21853870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wingedchester_67/pseuds/Pan
Summary: Stan and Wendy are on a research trip out in the Atlantic Ocean off the shores of New Jersey. Cartman's captain of the research vessel, the S.S Casa Bonita, on her maiden voyage on the look out for whale activity.Out on a routine survey however, Stan happens to find something that's not quite a whale."Truthfully, I was actually out here on a thing looking for whales ..." Stan nervously rubbed the back of his neck, wiping at the sweat as the sun beat down on them mercilessly."Excuse me? Do I look like I weigh forty tonnes and eat unspeakable quantities of krill?!" Kyle asked indignantly, flaming to the ear (fin?) tips at the mere suggestion.Stan glanced meaningfully at the finned cetacean-like appendage that extended out from the boy's torso, spilling out into the ocean."... do you want me to answer that truthfully or?""Fuck off!"
Relationships: Craig Tucker/Tweek Tweak, Kyle Broflovski/Stan Marsh, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Stan Marsh/Wendy Testaburger, past Stan Marsh/Wendy Testaburger
Comments: 18
Kudos: 91





	1. Close Encounters

**Author's Note:**

> A fic to pair with the fanart I made for Style Week here! https://deanwingedchester.tumblr.com/post/189743971926/sp-style-week-19th-day-5-fanfictions-im-from-nz
> 
> Truthfully, I had been working on this for a few weeks by now, like 3 weeks. Both the fic and the art, it just so happened I finished the art at a great time to post during Style Week!
> 
> I got the idea from this fic from foxydodo's mermaid post here https://foxydodo.tumblr.com/post/168552267305/some-mermaid-au-sketch-dump-sorry-theyre-a-bit  
> But all I could think about was "Kyle's hair would be a lot more fun as a mermaid because it'd be nice and behave under water, but as soon as it starts drying up on the surface it's going to be frizz central." Not to mention Stan would totally be a whale biologist on a personal mission to save the whales with his love of animals. So hence this fic was born ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Lastly, I use UK English, so sorry if I stubbornly keep spelling things -our and maybe use less common terms in the US which are commonplace in UK English and like, not understand Fahrenheit or whatever. I try to use American terms like yards, inches and Fahrenheit where possible, but I will make errors because I am a lost UK English babbu who will need coaching on Americanisms.
> 
> This fic is unbeta'd, I'm my own proof reader and all mistakes are my own, yay!

Off the coast of New York in the Atlantic Ocean, about a week out at sea, the S.S Casa Bonita set anchor on a bitter Autumn morning.

On the deck of the florid hued yacht, swathed in pink and spring green, the two young Marine Biology PhD students, Stan and Wendy, hoisted one of the battered, rickety old dinghies from the alcoves in the sides of the ship. They were life boats turned designated field research boats, and the pair dropped one wrapped with ropes into the water with a mighty splash.

Stanley Marsh let out the breath he wasn’t aware he was holding and wiped the hair out of his eyes, mopping up his sweat with his signature red poof ball hat. The thing was ratty, probably needed replacing since he hit thirteen, but he wore it anyways. It was a point of nostalgia for him. He just always wore it. It was almost part of his identity. It wasn't an especially fancy or attractive hat, in fact it was kind of childish and old fashioned, it was just a remnant of his childhood that's stuck by him through all his developmental years and he wasn't about to retire it now. Although with the swells in the ocean current, if he didn't pocket it soon he might not have a choice in the matter. 

He wouldn’t need much on this outing, just his research messenger bag full of vials, a hunting knife, a pH checker and some resealable bags for sample taking. His wetsuit constricted his breathing slightly, the thick rubber snug around his neck and chest, but it didn’t impede him, just made him more aware of it.

“I can’t believe Cartman won’t take us closer to the research site, what is he thinking, telling me to go out in this rotting pile of splinters,” Stan complained, stowing the poof ball hat into his bag as he donned scuba goggles. He wasn’t planning to go out for a swim, but the straps kept his hair out of his eyes. It probably made it all stick up and look dorky. He looked over to his partner in crime, Wendy Testaburger, tying up her hair in defiance of the fierce wind that blew in her face, sending unruly strands flying every which way, who gave him a little smile back as she ruffled the offending spikes in his now strapped hair.

Stan’s known Wendy since grade school, they were working together on their PhD project, a study on cetaceans. Wendy was looking into synthesizing whale byproducts while Stan was studying cetacean migratory pattern changes from climate change. Thus, the current voyage of the S.S Casa Bonita was tracking a humpback whale spotted off the shore of New Jersey. The humpback was last seen near their current coordinates, and it was Stan’s job to tag the thing. No big deal right? Just track down a single forty ton individual whale who could be a thousand feet below sea level and stick a tracker on it. No biggie right Marsh?

They had been playing recorded whale song for the whole journey hoping to call it closer to the research site, but so far there had been no luck, and all the whale song seemed to attract was empty water. So, instead, they decided to try to turn their fruitless endeavour around by repurposing the trip to taking seawater samples and analyze their pH, microscopic animal content and to look for traces of whale fecal matter to see if the beastie was even still in the area, among other glorious mundane cetologist tasks. Not all whale research was testing dolphin intelligence and decrypting whale song, sometimes as a marine biologist you end up looking for whale shit.

The water this morning was a steely grey, and lapped at the edges of the rowboat as it bobbed below. Stan hobbled onboard gracelessly, sneezing violently as Wendy snorted at his antics from the deck of the main ship.

“What, you bothered by a bit of chilly weather Stan? I thought this would be mild to you considering we both grew up in winter Colorado.” she teased. “It’s only like, forty degrees out or something, weak.”

Stan grunted, as he didn’t so much as sit on the narrow excuse of a bench on the rowboat as handled a controlled fall onto the miserable wood. He pinched off a second sneeze as he turned to look up at Wendy. “Nah I hate both. Just because I’m used to the cold doesn’t make it any less miserable. When I heard our research site was going to be off the coast of New York I thought it’d be a little warmer I don’t know. But no, apparently autumn in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with oceanic winds, it’s colder than a witch’s tit. The last thing I want to do in this weather is go out in a rowboat to get samples of whale shit.” his teeth chattered.

Wendy nodded. “That's understandable Stan, but we need to survey this area for the humpback, and track any dolphin pod activity in the area for the next three months, it's imperative to our project.” Wendy pointed out objectively, as she threw off the ropes that were tethering the rowboat to the main boat.

“I know Wendy” Stan agreed, grabbing his oars to stabilize the rowboat as it started to bob aimlessly. “But Cartman could’ve at least actually gotten us to the site. Why can’t he take us there directly?”  
  
Wendy rolled her eyes even as she pulled away strands of hair as a particularly strong gust of sea breeze wrapped her hair around her face. “You know why Stan. There was a storm and a freight boat was wrecked not far from the site. The place is full of random metal shit and it’s a hazard for larger ships but safer for small vessels.”

_‘Dammit,’_ Stan thought, grumbling to himself. Wendy and her stupid … logic, legitimising Cartman’s orders. Yeah, orders. Cartman owned the ship Stan and Wendy were currently using as their main research vessel. God knows why Cartman happened to get a boat a week before Stan and Wendy were given their research grant. Stan could only guess at why he seemed so agreeable to their asking of him to use said boat. And of course Cartman had christened his boat the S.S Casa Bonita, painted it after its namesake, cheesy sombreros, festive flag garlands, tiki torches and all.

“Well come on then, we don’t have all day Stan, get rowing. We’re burning daylight just talking about marine biology rather than doing said marine biology” Wendy egged, nodding at the rapidly rising sun.

Suddenly, a black boot perched itself on the edge of the boat before kicking it away from the yacht, threatening to capsize the tiny rowboat.

"What the hell?" Stan started, before looking up to see a familiar faked bearded double chin.

“Get moving hippy, you’re ruining my ocean view from my tanning spot. You’ve got three hours to make it to the research site and back and I don’t want my valuable sunbathing time wasted waiting for you to leave my damn boat.” Eric Cartman gloated in his signature whiny tone. Stan scowled. If it weren’t for the fact that the fatass refused to wear a life jacket and would therefore drown in a watery grave, Stan would have pushed the bigoted asshole overboard himself long ago. But it might look a bit suspicious if Stan and Wendy came back from the research trip without the ship’s captain. 

"I’m going, I’m going. Keep your panties on, geez Cartman." said Stan, as he started rowing his oars before Eric did something that _did_ capsize him.

“Ey! That’s Captain Black Bart to you” Eric pompously pouted, lifting his fake revolver at Stan. Stan groaned internally. It wasn’t enough for Cartman to captain the ship, he also had to fuel his fantasy and insist on being addressed as Captain Black Bart. He also ran the ship like a pirate ship, calling Butters his first mate, Stan his deck swab, and Wendy the kitchen wench. The latter he only did when Wendy wasn’t in the immediate vicinity, because the last time Cartman attempted to call her ‘ _Wenchy_ ’, she had almost castrated him on the spot

“Keep your panties on Captain Black _Fart_ ” Stan gritted his teeth, muffling the altered ad nauseum. Cartman nodded his satisfaction and turned back to setting up his tanning bed. Stan had to admit, while Eric was a lazy fatass who spent the day bossing around Butters and lying on the deck with a glass of apple juice he passed off as rum all day, he did know how to lead a ship, even if obnoxiously. Cartman had a way of convincing people. Without him Stan and Wendy would never have been able to recruit the crew they had for the price Eric managed to score. The crew wasn’t very big, as managing the modest yacht wasn’t very demanding, but Cartman had managed to hire Craig from his automotive and bike repair shop as the engineer, Heidi as the crew nurse, and Butters as first mate. Though Stan wasn’t too sure if Butters was getting paid at all, he was always a bit too naive and affable for his own good. Stan could only hope he could keep some control of the situation, and back out in time and not let Cartman lead them all by the nose into some half baked, hair-brained scheme only known to Cartman’s maniacal mind, burning down around his ears.

Cartman ordered Wendy to help set up the umbrella for just the right amount of shade for the fatass to not completely become Sunday’s roast, as Butters had the unenviable job of lathering his lordship with sunscreen. The wet noises of rubbing in lotion Stan made a note to brain bleach out later. 

“I still think it's wholly unfair Wendy doesn’t have to go instead of me,” he complained.

Wendy rolled her eyes. “You lost fair and square Stan, get over it. Not my fault you always pick scissors first in Rock Paper Scissors. It’s totally predictable, and now you have to go out for the samples, while I get to sit here and collect data from my nice comfy lounge chair.” she said, sitting pointedly in said chair and pulling out an instrument that had little readings detailing some thing or another.

Stan pouted, his boat a good ten meters from the yacht now “I knew I should have challenged you to best of three”

Wendy stuck out her tongue and then grinned in triumph. “Then I’d have had the pleasure of beating you three times in a row, get with the program Stan, you can’t beat me.”

He childishly mirrored the gesture, Wendy laughing as the S.S Casa Bonita started shrinking the further Stan got away from it. 

After a while of mindless rowing, Stan started singing under his breath to try make the task slightly more bearable and less lonely. He wasn’t paying any attention to what he was singing particularly, it was mostly aimless notes and sections of his favourite songs. He eventually settled on a rendition of his original song, You Gotta Drive Hybrids Now, but in minor to shake things up a little. It was a stupid song he composed in fourth grade after Wendy told him all about the climate benefits of driving hybrids over gas guzzlers. After about thirty minutes of exertion, the S.S Casa Bonita was about the size of a tennis ball in the distance, and Stan had rowed the little rowboat to the middle of the freight ship wreckage, easily identifiable by the steel reusable containers and the mess of goods flooding the area.

The jagged peaks of steel violently ripping itself apart glistened with rapidly growing algae patches, seemed to yawn ominously as the tiny rowboat approached. Stan grimaced as he navigated his way deeper into the wreckage. Sharp metal gaped like the maw of some great beast, just looking for Stan to slip up and snap his tiny rowboat up in its jaws. Wendy was right, sailing through this wreckage on the S.S Casa Bonita would be just asking for a repeat performance. It was a shame events such as these left such damning consequences on the environment though. The leaking oils from the fuel tanks of the freight boat, while not as severe as a proper oil spill, still shimmered in a toxic film over the immediate sealife. Nature was already reclaiming the wreck though, algae was already slicking up the sides of the exposed gnarled steel, and hardy fish unbothered by the oils were swimming near the surface, scattering as Stan rowed near. Doing his bit to clean up after the natural disaster, Stan picked up after the waterlogged shipment of textiles which was currently choking up this patch of ocean. The rowboat couldn’t hold much so he only picked up small articles that were most likely to pose choking hazards to the local marine life, such as the clear plastic packaging or synthetic looking faux fur materials that would wear down quickly into microplastics.

Quickly taking out a test tube, Stan scooped up part of the oilier looking water samples for analysis of what exactly was poisoning the environment this time, later back in the lab, and he also scraped off some of the salty residue that had started to build up on the floating debris. Stan then steered the boat closer to some of the bigger parts of the wreckage to collect samples of the orange, rusty algae that was blooming near the centre of the wreck, when he saw a small floating white lump of some sort. Frowning, Stan rowed closer and fished the lump from the water and turned it over in his hands. It didn’t look like debris from the ship, it looked organic, and felt … oily. It wasn’t exactly malleable, but it left a waxy residue where it touched his hands. Perhaps it was some sort of oil build up from the engine of the freight ship? Shrugging to himself, Stan sealed the lump in a bag and set it in his research bag just the same, and went back to look at the orange algae. 

He came to a stop before the rowboat could crash into the wreck, which would have been very bad as the jagged, very sharp looking ship metal could probably shred Stan’s tiny rowboat into driftwood if he wasn’t too careful. Stan took out a length of rope, securing the oars loosely to the sides of the rowboat, loose enough it wouldn’t be a hassle to get them out but tight enough so he wouldn’t risk knock the oars overboard as he attempted to make the extraction.

Not wanting particularly to risk having his rowboat sliced in half by the sharp looking edges of the wreck, he liked staying in one piece, surprisingly enough, Stan took out his kit and leaned out a distance from the boat to try reach the algae. He found himself waving his arms just short of the wreck. Frowning, Stan rummaged in his research bag for his knife, that should give him the reach he needed to scrape off a sample.

_‘Aha, there it was_ .’ Stan gripped the knife and leaned back over the water. ‘ _Careful now, easy,’_ Stan thought to himself as the boat drifted slightly more close to the wreck than he was comfortable with.

He held his breath as the sharp blade scraped trace amounts of the orange residue from the surface, leaving gleaming steel behind. He needed more for a full sample, Stan wriggled the knife around a bit, trying to collect as much of the substance as he could on the flat edge of his knife when he grunted. Shit, it got caught on something. He tugged at the knife as it stubbornly stayed wedged into some invisible, uneven flaw on the edge of the wreck. It was stuck tight and wasn’t coming out. Stan could tell it wasn’t stuck too hard, he just needed slightly more leverage to yank the knife free. ‘ _Fucking piece of shit knife_.’ He thought to himself. Stan went to manouver his arm closer to the wreck and yank harder, when the rowboat started tipping dangerously, and Stan barely had the time to say “Oh fuck.” and threw his arm out automatically, like one would when falling onto concrete, when it snagged on the rope holding the oars to the rowboat before the rowboat violently tipped away from under him and capsized, sending his stupid ass right into the water.

The freezing water was a shock to his system. Stan floundered as he tried to tread water, his teeth chattering. He shook his head flinging water every which way as the straps from his research bag was cutting into his shoulder painfully. The bag filled with water and tried to drag him down, there was rope was tangled around his legs making it difficult to kick. He had to try anyway, kicking as best he could to keep his head above the surface spluttering, spitting out the rancid oil filmed water yelling obscenities. Stan needed to free his arm and legs, he needed to cut the rope to have any chance of staying afloat. By some miracle Stan had enough mind about him to have not dropped the knife when he fell in the water, and he brought it up to his left arm to begin sawing madly at the strap wrapped around his arm. He congratulated himself as the strap gave way and his arms were free to tread water, when an ocean swell surged up beneath him and threw him back, submerging him below the water's surface. 

The salt stung at his eyes but he couldn’t think about that. Dark shapes of the boyant remains of the ship swayed with the ocean swells as the current attempted to sweep them all under. Stan had to work fast, without air he wouldn’t have the strength to cut the rope for very long. He didn’t know which was up, the water tossing him off his orientation. He’d work on that issue when he got to it, one problem at a time, and first he had to free his legs or he’d never get back to the surface. He got to work hacking at the rope looped around his legs, which he could now see was still attached to the rowboat through the water filtered sunlight. A dark shape twisted in the water in his peripheral vision, and Stan froze with sudden fear. What was it, was it a shark? Was his sour luck about to turn for the worse? Stan twisted around as best he could to catch sight of it, when he felt another ocean swell carry him in its surge, tossing him about underwater and depositing him directly onto the surface of the sheet of metal he had been so valiantly trying to avoid.

Impact. Stan watched rather than felt his body bounce roughly off the metal as he was stunned, tiny precious air bubbles escaping his lips in shimmering, shivering orbs. Time seemed to slow down as his scrambled brain seemed to only be able to process information at a thousandth of a second at a time. He was aware he was starting to sink through the water, he knew he should probably keep trying to swim, but it was like there was a delay in getting the signals from his head to his limbs. The icy permeance of the water enclosed around him, seeping into his bones. It was almost comforting in its foreboding embrace. A dark cloud billowed around him, almost hauntingly ethereal. That was blood wasn’t it? It tasted like blood, in his mouth, which was slightly agape. It was his blood. Stan numbly noted a burning sensation on his scalp that let him know he had likely cut himself on the sharp metal when his head slammed into the wreck of the boat. Head wounds bleed a lot, if the shark hadn’t noticed him before it would definitely have noticed him now. The vaguely working, yet unhelpful side of his brain informed him that sharks could smell a drop of blood in a hundred litres of water, up to five kilometers away. It didn’t look like blood really, in this light. It was all dark, like a cloud of fine, translucent squid ink. It was the blue light, his unhelpful brain supplied. The blue filtering the light around him makes the brightest red look black through enough blue light. It’s why lionfish were striped red, like little parasitic ocean tigers. Stan smiled dumbly, ‘ _parasitic ocean tigers_ ,’ he thought.

Dying alone out at sea while collecting seawater for traces of whale shit, Stan thought to himself as his thoughts went fuzzy. Weak. Cartman would mock him at his funeral, a funeral without a body, how morose.

He thought he could see a dark form moving around him, there was a sensation of something gripping the hand he was miraculously still holding the knife with. _No,_ he struggled weakly. He wasn’t going to let the shark take away his only remaining line of defense. Not that it mattered much in the long, _(ha)_ short term if he was going to drown anyway. The knife was pried from his hands as he smiled softly and his eyes finally closed of their own accord. How stupid would it be, if it wasn’t the wreck itself that cut him, but Stan stabbing himself when he was thrown into the wreck that attracted the shark that had now taken his knife away from him. 

‘ _A knife with a shark, that’s a scary sight_ ,’ his delirious brain supplies. Wait that’s wrong.

Something was rigorously fidgeting with something by his legs. It was irritating, couldn’t they see Stan just wanted to go to sleep? He tried kicking weakly at the source of fidgeting.

There was a sensation of water rushing past his face. His thoughts were just starting to drift into nothingness when suddenly, air! He was quite literally thrown violently from the water and landed heavily onto a wooden surface. The shock of the landing drove some of the water from his lungs as he hacked and spluttered, before leaning over and vomited from the impact. His throat wracked and choked automatically as his lungs worked in overdrive and took desperate gulps of air, glorious air! His numb fingers gripped at the wooden grain, Stan was content to lay there, moaning pathetically and allowing him to collect himself. When he had slightly more wits about himself, he looked more closely at the wooden surface that kept him out of the water. It was the rowboat. Somehow, it had been flipped back right side up. The bottom was filled with water, but the little rowboat still managed to stay buoyant. Stan sighed, all his gear was no doubt on its way to the bottom of the ocean by now. He looked around and there was mercifully still one oar secured to the edge of the boat, the other long since gone when he hacked off the rope that tied his arm to the rowboat before. He’d have a way back to Cartman’s yacht at least, and wouldn’t be forced to wait out here for rescue where Cartman would afterwards mercilessly rip on him for. Stewing in his thoughts of Cartman’s wrath, Stan was startled when a loud but dull thud snapped him out of his brief reverie.

He snapped his head to the sound and saw a brief flash of grey and dark red as something sliced through the water behind him. Was that the shark he had seen before, in the water? Why hadn’t it killed him? He peered quickly at the surface, searching for whatever it was. No, whatever it was he had seen, it was certainly not a shark, as any self respecting shark’s mind consuming blood-lust would have had it render him into cute little bite sized chunks by now. Whatever it was in the water, miraculously enough it had _saved him._ Stan’s eyes widened at the realisation. Was it some sort of dolphin perhaps? Though, the size was all wrong, and Stan was pretty sure he was familiar enough as a cetalogist to know that he didn’t know of any dolphins that came in red. Nothing peered back at him from the waters surface except for his miserable looking reflection. Resigning himself to the fact he may never know exactly what species it was that had saved him, Stan instead looked to see if he could find out what had the creature had used to make the thunking sound in the boat. 

Looking over at where the creature was, Stan saw that into the side of the rowboat, was his knife, stabbed a good inch and a half into the surface of the boat like a hook. Hanging off the makeshift hook, was of all things his research bag. Stan peered into the bag and was astounded to see most of his samples and equipment, were still in the bag. They hadn’t been lost, they were water logged and a little worse for wear, but otherwise intact. Marveled, at a loss for words and deciding to count his lucky stars, Stan decided to stop asking questions and immediately start rowing back towards the S.S Casa Bonita before a shark that no doubt _did_ scent his blood came along to investigate, it wasn’t safe here, and he probably had a concussion.

The trip back took more than twice as long with only one oar, but eventually Stan saw Wendy waving at him from the deck laughing at his decrepit appearance.

“Decided to go out on a swim while you were out there Marsh?” she teased, throwing out a rope to tether the rowboat back to the yacht.

“I fucking fell in the water and lost one of the oars.” Stan yelled back, extending the remaining oar out towards her. Wendy grabbed the oar and used it to pull Stan and the rowboat flush with the yacht and helped Stan back on board, while Cartman yelled “Oi don’t scratch the paint on my yacht!” somewhere off to the side.

“You alright Stan? What happened” Before Stan could reply, Wendy’s eyes widened at the dribbled of red that streaked down the side of Stan’s face. 

“You’re bleeding!” Wendy cried, her hand going to the back of his head, and as she pulled it back it came with more blood.

Stan winced “Oh yeah, I hit my head on some debris when I fell in” he admitted. “I might have a bit of a concussion, I think I almost blacked out.” Stan tried to play it off as not a big deal to not worry Wendy, failing miserably as he tried his best not to wobble. He never got sea sick, but the motion of the boat was disagreeing with the spinning in his head and Stan didn’t want to throw up on Wendy. He did that enough as a kid and when he told her why, she might take this the wrong way.

Wendy shook her head and tutted disapprovingly. “You should have been more careful, you were out there on your own Stan, what if you got really hurt? No one would have been able to help you, dumb dumb.” she grasped his arm and lead him into the interior of the yacht. Passing Butters coming up to tend to Cartman with a nod “Come on, let’s go see Heidi, she can patch you right up.”


	2. Many Musings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan tells Wendy about his near-death experience. Heidi patches him up from said experience and a few hijinks featuring Butters and Cartman

Heidi’s office was one of the nicer rooms on the S.S Casa Bonita, it had to be for her supplies of medical equipment and uncluttered so that she could move patients in and out freely. Nothing at all like Stan’s cramped cabin. The only room on the boat that could possibly have rivaled the medical bay in terms of size, apart from the dining room, was Cartman’s room.

Everything in the medical bay was sterile and white. Heidi busied herself around Stan and Wendy as she fetched a clean towel and instructed Wendy to mop away some of the blood as she looked for a bucket of water to clean the wound with. Thankfully, according to Heidi it wasn’t a big wound, just a little nick at his scalp. The bleeding had lessened considerably but she’d like to get it inspected and cleaned all the same considering the filth in the water he had fallen in.

Wendy pressed the damp towel to Stan’s head, shaking slightly as he hissed in pain. “Baby.” She scolded. “Can’t even look after yourself can you Stan?” Wendy dabbed at the wound lighter all the same, tenderly keeping as little pressure on the injury site as she could while Heidi dribbled clean water into the cut, flushing it out. 

The water caused his hair to fall into his eyes again, and Wendy helped cradle the area around Stan’s eyes to stop the hair from getting too close. 

“Your hair is disgusting, there’s probably all sorts of sea life and oil caked into this crap. Did you at least get the samples you went out for? Or are we going to have to take them from your hair now?” Wendy teased, she went to wipe her fingers on Stan’s jacket like her hand was diseased when Heidi gave her the OK to do so.

Stan rolled his eyes and dreamt of the intensive shower he'd have to take just to scrub this shit out of his skin and thrust his sopping research bag at her. “I got your damn samples Doctor Testaburger. No need to bust my balls for it.”

Wendy’s demeanor changed as her face instantly lit up and looked positively delighted. 

“Oh fantastic! This looks perfect. I’ll get this logged at the lab right away!” She nimbly left the medical bay with Stan’s waterlogged bag in hand, before pausing at the door. “Doctor Testaburger, I like that.” She said, smiling at him softly. Stan gave her both thumbs up, knowing she was just itching to get the samples under her microscope and electric sensors and write up a detailed report on it. _ ‘She was always passionate about her work,’ _ Stan thought.

Stan was again yanked from his thoughts as Heidi prodded the injury site causing him to wince as the burning in his scalp, which had settled to a slight prickle, decided to return in full force.

“Well, how’s it looking doc?” he asked, as Heidi leaned back from her work.

Heidi regarded him curtly. “You’ll live” she said, dropping her towels into the contaminated bins.

"You have to be more careful Stan, I don’t have many supplies on hand on this boat you know.” She said kindly, as she went about winding a gauze strip over a cotton patch fixed over the wound. “I was kind of hoping we'd get through this trip without incident. But knowing you, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised." 

Stan cringed as he remembered the antics he got up to as a child in South Park. Usually, Cartman was involved one way or another, but Stan would more often than not end up scraped and bruised. There was a particularly memorable incident when he was thirteen involving the world’s largest beaver dam and a case of motor vehicle theft. Did it count if the automotive vehicle was a jet boat? Stan wasn’t sure, and he didn’t stick around to find out at the time. He walked from that crash site with a broken arm and needing five stitches to a nasty gash in his leg. Wendy had partnered with Bebe and Heidi to patch him up when Stan had come to them for help, and after they did what they could, Heidi had been the one to call the hospital. In some weird way, Heidi had Stan to thank for her interest in medicine, so it was somewhat poetic she was the one fixing him up now. Stan smiled with nostalgia as Heidi booped him on the nose.

“Look at you Marsh, ten years later and still as reckless as ever,” she said. Stan grinned back at her, pointing at himself.

“You know me Heidi, I couldn’t keep this nose out of reckless business, even if I tried.” he winked cheekily at her. She smacked his hand out of the air, hiding her amusement.

“If you keep this up I’ll throw you overboard myself and save the medical supplies for a real emergency, I can’t have you hogging them all to yourself Stan.” she scolded.

Heidi went back to one of her cabinets, searching through their contents while Stan was left to fidget on the patient table.

Now that he’s got a moment of quiet to himself, he mulled over the events in his head. He looked to the horizon in the direction of the freight ship wreckage, replaying the morning scene by scene. Something had saved his skin back there, of that he was certain. If it weren’t for whatever it was looking out for him that morning, Stan was pretty sure he’d be fish food at the bottom of the ocean by now. Whatever the creature was, it had used his knife, that much Stan could recall. So either dolphins were getting a lot more sophisticated in how they used their beaks, or whatever that had been there had some dexterity beyond your average porpoise.

Stan was pulled from his musings as Heidi came back before him with a small pen-sized box in hand. 

"You said you cut yourself on the metal of the boat right? " she asked. Heidi eyed him carefully as if assessing his truthfulness to whatever he was going to reply to in his next statement.

Stan looked at her and answered cautiously, wary of what she was hoping to administer him.

"Yes? " Stan was uncertain why this detail was important. It was pretty obvious what happened, there wasn’t much for Stan to cut his noggin on out in open water. It's not like there were shells or something he could have cut himself on. 

"Alright, so it was an injury on metal” Heidi noted. She tilted her head and continued on her questioning.”Did you have your tetanus booster shot in the last ten years?" Heidi pulled out what Stan now saw was a needle of clear liquid inside from the confines of the box. Ah, so that’s what Heidi was grabbing. 

"Um," Stan bit his lip as he wracked his brain for any recollection of his medical history. Within the last ten years? Stan was lucky if he remembered he had homework the previous day. He didn't know what his parents got him immunised for, he just knew he got injections as a kid and they sucked ass but were good for him. He should probably know his medical history, Wendy would be biting his head off if she knew he didn't have the slightest clue what his medical history was. 

"Probably?" Stan guessed, grinning nervously at the deceptively sweet look Heidi was giving him while she plotted to stab him with the needle

"That's not a real answer Stan," Heidi said. She came to stand before him and Stan gulped nervously. "Now hold still this may sting a bit" She prepped the needle, squeezing out any air bubbles.

Stan's indignant man scream was probably heard all the way from Wendy's lab.

“Huh, sounds like Heidi finally killed Stan,” Cartman noted from the deck.

“You think so?” Butters asked, alarmed. Heidi was a nice girl, she may joke about it but he didn’t think she had it in her to actually kill Stan.

“Can’t be too sure Butters. If Marsh doesn’t show up for dinner I want you to move the things from my closet into Stan’s room.” Eric ordered, turning to face the sea spray. It made him look regal, he thought. Like a classic captain from the golden age of piracy, cravat and all. In reality, Craig thought it made him look like a badly dressed Celine Dion knock off wearing a handkerchief in his collar. 

“Well sure thing Captain Black Bart,” Butters replied. “But Sir, don’t you think I could move to Stan’s cabin if he really did die? I mean the cleaning closet is great and all, but it's mighty cramped and since you moved your parrot in with me, he’s been hogging all the floor space!”

“Butters there’s one thing you should know as my first mate,” Cartman said. “As my right-hand man, I need you to be by my side as close as possible to protect me from mutiny, and the closest room to the Captain’s Quarters is the cleaning closet. I need you in that cleaning closet Butters, and I thought you understood that as my most trusted minion.”

Butters hesitated, going through this information in his head. “Aw Captain, that’s sweet of you to say. I would never let you fall to mutiny.” a cheerful smile spread across the boy’s face. “Alright Eric, I’d love to stay in the cleaning closet!”

“That’s Captain Black Bart Butters and you know it!” Eric raged.

Meanwhile, below deck, Stan was still rubbing his sore shoulder as he skulked into the lab thirty minutes later.

The lab was cramped, an improvised space that shoved Cartman’s storage into a room below decks for Wendy to set up her spectroscopy monitors and computer equipment for monitoring ocean temperatures as they sailed the Atlantic ocean. 

"Hiya Stan, glad to see you're okay" Wendy didn't look up from the digital readouts the computer was spitting out on screen. She didn't have to bother, no one except them visited the labs after all.

"Hey, Wendy.” Stan returned her greeting. He used his arm to sweep some of the work to one side of the desk as he took up station next to Wendy, sitting backwards in his chair, letting his legs hang to each side of the back of the chair and leaning his sore forearm on the back. The contents of his bag that weren’t actively being analyzed were scattered on his desk along with his knife and poof ball hat. Stan grabbed his hat in hand, squeezing out the residual water from its ratty knitting. The thing really was falling apart, he frowned. Hopefully, the latest stint in the water wouldn’t damage it too much, the poor rag probably couldn’t handle much more abuse before it decides to disintegrate in his hands. “Did you find anything interesting in what I got? Was my pain and suffering worth it?" Stan asked. He leaned over her shoulder to glance at the readings himself. Things looked pretty normal, acidity was up but that was to be expected from a polluted wreck. Contaminants were higher of course, oils, traces of heavy metals, rust, and so on.

"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that Stan," said Wendy, as she finally pulled herself from the machines.

"Do you know what you got in this bag?" She held up one of the sealed plastic bags Stan used to retrieve the samples with. Judging from her serious tone, it must’ve been something significant. Stan took the bag from her and turned it over in his hands, it was the chunk of waxy white substance Stan had picked up from the wreckage.

Stan shrugged. "I dunno to be honest." He admitted. "Some kind of complex fat from what it felt like. I thought it might be like, from an oil clog from the freight ship engine or something. I thought we’d analyze it and see what caused it, if it was an impurity in the fuel we’d write up a report about how to avoid engine failure by finding a process to filter out impurities that would result in clumps like this or something.”

Wendy gripped his shoulders and shook him once excitedly. "You didn't just pick up any old complex fat Stan, you picked up a chunk of ambergris!" Stan blinked blankly in return.

"Gesundheit?"

Wendy shook her head, exasperated. “No dummy, ambergris!” She gestured at the lump. “It’s a byproduct from whales. This stuff is used in high-end perfumes and beauty products, it's really rare!" Wendy looked expectantly at Stan, like any of the terms she had just said were supposed to be ringing major bells to him right now. Stan could only give a face of obliviousness in return. Wendy rolled her eyes as she realised Stan obviously, was still not comprehending exactly what Wendy was so excited about. 

"That,” Stan said incredulously, gesturing at the nondescript grey chunk in Wendy’s hands. "Is used in high-end perfumes? You can’t be serious.” 

Wendy took a step back, looking at Stan disapprovingly. “I’m deadly serious right now Stanley.” Stan looked at her when she used his full name. Usually, she only did that when he was being a particularly difficult idiot. “Let me put it in layman's terms for you Stan,” she said, carefully placing the sample of ambergris.onto the lab table. “Queen Victoria of England herself favoured a perfume that used ambergris.”

Wendy pulled out her phone to link a news article highlighting an Australian ambergris find earlier that year which was auctioned off for thirty-five grand. "That's not exactly a glowing endorsement Wendy, didn't the Victorians put really fucked up shit like lead in their beauty products?" 

She rolled her eyes. “Let’s just say Bebe would kill you and your whole family for ten mils of perfume that contained ambergris okay?”

That, Stan could understand. One didn’t go through sixth grade without witnessing Wendy’s best friend Bebe falling into the latest fashion, health and well-being fads. Bebe was fiercely material and loved high-end fashion.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for this stuff, I needed to analyze it so I can work on making a sustainable synthetic myself. There are a few out there, but none with the subtle long-lasting power of natural ambergris, everything that is meant to last long is overpowering, and everything with the right notes just washes right off.” Wendy said. “I can’t believe you actually found some! This will be super useful for my research.”

“So like,” Stan started, “What is it exactly? It felt like it was some sort of super hard wax or whatever.”

Wendy nodded “Yes, it’s a hardened wax made from the fatty acids of a sperm whales digestive system coating an indigestible object in its stomach, like the beak of a squid or something.”

Stan stared. “So basically it’s petrified whale barf?!”

Wendy rolled her eyes “No, it just comes coated from the intestines, it can come out either end of the whale really, and it’s not petrified, it's oxidized.”

“Oh because that makes it so much better. Lucky me” Stan muttered. “I picked up  _ oxidized _ whale barf.” Ah, the glamorous life of a cetologist. “On the plus side.” Stan looked at Wendy and gave her a finger gun, which she frowned disapproving at. “At least this proves that we were right and that there is a whale in the area for us to tag.”

Wendy shook her head, she tucked her hair behind her ears as she pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Stan. “Not so fast, the oxidation is actually a process that takes many years for it to accomplish a white colour. There’s no guarantee the whale that made this piece isn’t years gone or even dead by now.” The paper was a reference sheet to roughly how many years it took for ambergris to reach a certain shade and the rankings of a find based on lightness. Looks like Wendy had quite a bit of previous research on the subject.    
  
Wendy then held up said piece of whale vomit. “Looks like you got yourself some Grade A shit right here Stan.”

Stan shrugged his shoulders with indifference. “Good to know my sliced up head was worth coming back with some Grade A whale shit for my ex-girlfriend’s future business endeavors.”

They both shared a laugh at that. It felt good, without that pressure from grade school to highschool of impressing Wendy in an attempt to flirt with her. The Definitive Breakup made it so it was so much more freeing talking to Wendy without worrying if what he said was attractive or if it would scare her off for good.

“So, you never told me. Why’s the strap of your research bag all mangled? You fell in the water you didn’t get into a fight with a bear.” Wendy teased.

Stan hesitated, considering whether or not he wanted to tell Wendy the truth. It was bizarre, how he survived his encounter with the freight shipwreck. And to be fully honest, Stan wasn’t too sure how to retell it without sounding completely off his rocker.

When her expectant look started to waver into concern the longer Stan didn’t say anything, he eventually replied. “Well, I actually had to cut it off, it was cutting off circulation to my arm when I fell in the water.”

Wendy looked shocked. “You got tangled in the water?”

Stan nodded. “I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty scary. It was like I knew I had to swim but with the bag around my arm and the ropes around my legs I just couldn’t do it, you know?”

Wendy looked at him with concern “And then you cut yourself free right?”

Stan paused. He was hoping to stay reasonably vague about the details but it looked like Wendy wasn’t going to let him gloss over his near-death experience. “I managed to get my arm,” he said. “But then I got sent under by a rogue wave, really fucked up my perspective and I couldn’t get the rope at my feet, I couldn’t even really tell which way was up, I could’ve been swimming deeper into the ocean for all I knew.” He winced. That didn’t really make it sound better for Wendy did it?   
  
Despite it already being over, Wendy cursed. “Fuck, I knew it. I knew we shouldn’t have sent you out on your own, it’s too dangerous to be out in open water without someone to watch your back, but I let Cartman convince me to stay anyway,” she said, running her fingers pedantically through her hair. “How on earth did you get out of there?” she then asked, eyes wild.

Stan hesitated again. This was where the story got, strange.

“I’m not completely sure, to be honest,” he admitted. “One moment I was floating underneath the waves, and then I felt something cut away the ropes and pushed me to the surface. Whatever it was flipped the boat back right side up too.” he finished, fiddling with his poof ball hat.

“I don’t know what it was,” he said, “but somehow something out there in the ocean was smart enough to see I was in trouble and compassionate enough to help me.”

Wendy looked concerned. “Something? It wasn’t someone?”

Stan looked at her meaningfully. “It was the middle of a shipwreck in open ocean Wendy, we’d have seen if there was another boat nearby and there weren’t any free divers or a sub or anything in the water. And I’m sure if someone on board this ship was secretly my saviour they’d have said something by now.” 

Wendy held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay so it wasn’t some _ one.”  _ She bit her lip thoughtfully, Stan saw her come to the same conclusion he himself had considered in the corner of his mind. 

“You think you were saved by a dolphin of some sort or something?” she asked.

Stan shrugged “I dunno. A dolphin, really Wendy?”

She returned the shrug. “Well why not?” she asked, gesturing vaguely at the sparkling seas. “You know, you hear these sailor stories all the time. They’re drowning in some faraway shore and a dolphin comes by and saves their necks. Dolphins are certainly smart enough to save an idiot human.”

She looked at him seriously. “Oh my god, you think you were saved by a dolphin.”

Stan shook his head “I thought about it, but I don’t really think so, no. I got a glimpse of it before it swam off, and it didn’t look like a dolphin.” He tried thinking hard, back to the moment as he recounted the tale. “My memories fuzzy but I think whatever it was, it was red.”

“Red?” Wendy asked, cocking her brow. “Dolphins, or most marine mammals for that matter don’t come in red. You sure it was the creature that was red and not you bleeding profusely all over it with your head?”

Stan shrugged. “Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. But I like to think I didn’t bleed  _ that _ much.”

She rolled her eyes as she moved back to the electroscopy machine to examine the electroscopic readouts of the chemical composition of her treasured chunk of ambergris. Clearly Wendy had grown tired of his vague recollection.

“Well think about it Stan, what else could it possibly have been? Pretty sure you would have noticed if a whale saved you, those things are huge, and while fish do come in red a fish isn’t nearly smart enough to know you needed to breathe oxygen. A shark would’ve smelt fresh meat what with your blood everywhere and all” she prattled off.

“Ergo, through process of elimination, we can conclude, it must have been a marine mammal that saved your life and cut your stupid ass free from the ropes, that animal being a dolphin that you may or may not have bled all over with your head wound. As implausible as it seems.”

She waved a hand in the direction of the atlas taped to the wall, tracking their navigation.

“Seals and sea lions don’t come out this way, we both know those are more coastal, and everything else is too small to push you to the surface or flip over your capsized rowboat, so I think we can safely assume your butt was saved by a dolphin. Congratulations Flipper.” she said, already engrossed in the new data coming from the machine.

Knowing when he was dismissed, and that Wendy wouldn’t be coming out any time soon before dinner, Stan went to the door and called out behind him. “Do you think it would still be in the area?” he asked.

“What?” she said, looking annoyed she was still being pulled away from her work.

“Do you think that there’s more of them out there, the dolphins I mean.” Stan clarified. “And if they’re still out by the wreck” he continued. “We don’t have any records of a pod out this way, even migratory pattern-wise they’re way off course, could be due to climate change of course,” Stan said, tracking the traditional bottlenose dolphin migratory paths with his finger on the navigation map. “But we don’t have any records of a pod out here, we’d have picked up on a tracker signal if there was. This pod must be untracked” he finished. 

Stan looked to Wendy’s desk, where a slew of whale surveillance and monitoring equipment was piled upon.

“Do you think we have enough trackers to tag a whole new dolphin pod? Track these for the research too? I’d be interested in mapping out the new migratory path they’re taking” Stan mused.

Wendy looked thoughtful. “Supposing it isn’t some sort of super pod made of like, three other pods I suppose we should be fine, I’ll have to ask Craig to fashion a few new trackers from the spare parts I have from our last expedition but I think we can manage." she gave him a disapproving look "You're thinking of going back there, after what happened?" 

Stan shrugged. "Why not? If there are dolphins out there we should be surveying them anyway. May as well get something from the trip, even if we don't find the whale we're looking for." 

Wendy looked exasperated, “That’s not it and you and I both know it Stan. You want to go back there because you don’t believe it was dolphins out there do you?” She asked accusingly. Stan could only look guiltily at the ground. He wasn’t always the most accomplished liar. But then, when Stan looked up, he saw her expression softened and surprisingly, she nodded. "You won’t let this go until you know for sure. Fair point Marsh." Wendy took the poof ball hat from his restless fingers and straightened the garment out, placing it on his head carefully. “I’d probably have done the same thing anyway, Gotta know for sure right?” 

Stan looked up and smiled, glad she understood. It probably wasn’t very beneficial to his health to go risking his neck every time he wanted answers but Wendy knew when there was something he didn’t know he was like a dog with a bone. And as any dog owner knows, sometimes it’s easier to just let the dog have the bone and bury it rather than fight the dog tooth and nail. Just ask his poor parents about the incident with the Easter Bunny. There was a trip to the Vatican involved in that escapade. Wendy tilted her head in the direction of the captain's cabin. "You'll have to tell Cartman we'll be coming back tomorrow then." 

Stan groaned into his hands. Cartman would probably cause a fuss. Complain about delayed routing and fuel reserves not being infinite. They had a month to complete this trip and he had enough fuel to make it to the next pier in five weeks. He'd still complain though, Stan could hear it in his head already.

"Fine I'll deal with Cartman." he said, lingering at the door. "Make sure you remember to come up for dinner Wendy," he called. 

"Don't worry about me, worry about yourself Stan, Cartman will have your hide," she called back. 

Well, Stan thought, she wasn’t wrong. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so I KNOW ambergris isn't actually whale vomit and it's more like whale shit but for the purposes of this fic it will be because it is relevant to the plot.


	3. Investigation with a side of Sketching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan and Wendy go back out to the site to look for the creature together. In the process Stan has some sketching he'd like to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I didn't update for a long time, I actually have a few chapters already written but unedited and I just got around to editing today.

Cartman took the news of the return trip about as well as you'd expect. With a lot of screaming, complaining and underhanded threats to Stan's balls.

In the end, Stan had to promise to buy Cartman a whole three buckets of KFC as soon as they got back home to placate him, as if the fatass needed any more feeding.

Upon returning to the site the next day, the first chance she got, Wendy offered to take the rowboat out with Stan in a two-man team effort. She said it was so that she'd be there to tell him off if he got into another precarious situation again, and back him up if he needed it, like Stan was a particularly accident-prone toddler. Which, given his track record, sounded about right. Craig had commented something about Stan needing his babysitter with him, but Cartman had obliged to being one hand short on deck and ordered Craig to pick up the slack since Wendy was going to be out with Stan.

In addition to the sample collecting equipment Stan had taken out yesterday, they also brought along with them to the site buckets of fish that Butters had fished up that were too small to cook up in order to bait the supposed dolphins in the area, Wendy’s laptop and a special underwater music player to blast whale song from, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the whale they had initially set out to find on this expedition. 

The tiny rowboat made its second voyage out in so many days to the freight shipwreck. The water beneath them practically reverberated with whale song turned up to maximum volume as Wendy surveyed the mounted sonar monitor display for any answering whale calls while Stan aimlessly threw fish into the water at passing sea life, hoping the heightened activity would attract whatever it was that had saved his life. He kept his eyes peeled for that signature flash of red he recalled. 

As the hours ticked by, the most exciting thing that happened was a sea turtle swimming by to check their tiny boat out, and the sun continued to beat down on the dark-headed researchers. Wendy gave up on the sonar and started collecting more water and algae samples from the wreck and Stan had long since stopped tossing fish out and had settled into sketching images of the wreck and the fish and shellfish species that dotted the area. His sketchbook also doubled as a biology notebook, his sketches surrounded by observational notes. It definitely would have been more efficient to photograph the creatures with the camera Wendy had brought with them for this purpose, her own biology notebook was stored in digital form on her laptop with photographs, diagrams and even audio recordings of animal calls she had recorded. However, Stan found a calming sort of comfort doing biology documentary the old fashioned way, like some old crusty scholar who had libraries of plant sketches in a study back at home. His notebooks weren’t only filled with biology notes though, guiltily enough he was actually currently working on a sketch of Wendy. It wasn’t anything inherently romantic, just a force of habit. Stan had sketched Wendy often when they were still together, he was pretty certain there were a few pages of profile sketches in this very book. 

"Guess whatever was out here yesterday has left by now," Wendy said, as the fourth hour ticked on by. She pouted and sounded rather put out. It wasn’t uncommon for animal sightings leading to wild goose chases in this field of study. It was one thing to track the prints of a wolf after a sighting as it made its way across the country, it was quite another to track anything in the ocean. Water leaves no tracks. Any traces of animal presence like droppings were quickly washed away or fell into the murky depths of the ocean.

"Seems like it," Stan admitted. He gave a quick yawn and stretched out before his left leg could fall asleep on him. The ocean breeze picked up slightly and the pages fluttered with excitement, tethered only by the thin seal of glue binding the pages to the covers. He saw Wendy’s eyes drawn to the book from the movement.

"Ooh, whatcha drawing? " Wendy inevitably asked. 

"Nothing!" said Stan, as he quickly snapped his book shut. 

"Come off it." Wendy scoffed. "Since when do you hide anything from me?" She made a grasping gesture with her hands and looked expectantly at him.

Stan held out for all of two seconds before he sighed and surrendered his notebook. It was true, Wendy had probably seen more than half of all of Stan’s sketches, and he almost never kept any from her. Resigned to ridicule, he watched glumly as Wendy deftly flipped through the pages. She skipped over the drawings she was already familiar with before slowing down at the latest pages, where she paged through and peered at the images. She flipped over his latest portrait of her and trailed a hand down the page appreciatively, carefully avoiding smudging the pencil work. She then flipped to the page before and stopped, puzzled. "What’s this Marsh? These don't look like any fish I've ever seen" she commented.

"That's because you haven’t seen them, they aren’t real" Stan growled, snatching his notebook back, slightly flushing. "I know you're right and it was probably a dolphin, but I can’t get the idea out of my head. The thing I saw Wendy, I definitely saw it had red on it, and it looked totally different to anything I’ve seen before so I-” Stan trailed off. “I just wanted to explore what I thought I saw that day, what it might look like, the genus, the species. Even if it turns out to be something totally boring like a jellyfish that saved me."

He hurriedly scribbled out the latest incomplete sketch rendition of the fish Wendy had seen. It looked a little bit like a sea serpent, but much more eel-like with graceful, delicate swooping red fins. It had looked almost mystical, with knowledgeable kind eyes, as Stan figured whatever had saved his life that day was unlikely to be a bloodthirsty predatory species.

"Hey," Wendy said, grabbing hold of his arm, stopping Stan from scribbling over the rest of the page. He looked up as she leaned in. "Don't be like that on yourself, it's not stupid,” she said softly. Wendy grinned. “Here let me try." she snatched back his notebook before Stan could object, and quickly started on a sketch herself.

"Hey, give it back! " Stan yelled, reaching for it. "Nope," said Wendy leaning back with the notebook aloft, so if Stan wanted it back he'd have to crawl over her lap to do so, and he respected her too much to try something like that. Not to mention, it would almost surely flip over their boat, which Stan wasn't in any hurry to repeat.

"I want to help theorize what your fantasy fish looks like, this sounds fun. It's like making up your own species to discover so you can make it as cool and exciting as you want" she said with glee. “Or making your fursona from the time you were fourteen.”

“I was twelve!” Stan quickly corrected. “And I’m not a furry!”

“Really?” Wendy teased, scratching quick strokes with the graphite pencil. “So the character you made Hayley Brimstonepaw who was part human, part wolf, part bat, rocked a stacked rack and raised by a pride of lions wasn’t a wish fulfillment fursona then?” 

“I was twelve and naive!” Stan whined as Wendy threw her extensive knowledge of his past in his face, as she proudly displayed said knowledge of Stan’s sketching escapades through his youth. Stan gave up trying to snatch the book back from her, he had to collect his shattered pride and she was too aware of his movements to catch her off guard. The hour was filled with the sound of graphite on paper as Wendy worked on her sketch, and Stan looked idly out to sea, listening to the waves and the wail of whale song.

“There we go” Wendy chirped, handing the sketchbook back at last. She tucked the pencil into the pages of the book as Stan took it back. Stan looked at Wendy’s drawing and scowled. “Did you seriously just draw fucking Ariel in my sketchbook Wendy? We’re scientists, not Disney princesses.”

Wendy laughed and threw her head back. “Oh, you’re no fun. Who said scientists can’t have a little bit of fun?” She sniggered. She sat next to him and dragged a finger down the sketch she made. “And,” she continued, taking her grey stained finger and tapping Stan on the nose, no doubt smearing graphite on his nose. “I figured if we’re going about drawing make-believe fish, might as well go all the way and imagine discovering a mermaid.” She leaned back, staring at the waves on the horizon dreamily. “Wouldn't that be great Stan, discovering a mermaid?”

  
Stan snorted. “Yeah if I was five maybe.” he gripped the ends of his sleeve and wiped across his face in an attempt to clean off his nose. Wendy pouted. “Don’t make fun of me like that! It’s an honest question. I think it’d be so exciting.” Wendy clasped her hands together with glee.

“I think I’d name the species homo ichthyius, or homo piscius.” She said. Stan smiled at her enthusiasm, and decided to entertain her “What if your mermaid was part cetacean instead Doctor Testaburger?” He asked, “Ariel has fins but what about something more mammalian? Doesn’t that make more sense, that a mermaid would be mammalian rather than a fusion of fish and person?” Wendy paused, considering for a bit. “Homo Cetacid then.” She decided.

Stan rolled his eyes at her, he knew she was just trying to alleviate the boredom from being effectively stranded out at sea waiting for a whale to come along and pick up on their song. “Then I dub thee,” he said, taking the pencil and placing the point on the shoulder of Wendy’s drawing, like a king knighting a vassal. “Homo Cetacid.” 

Wendy let out a laugh.”So is that how I earn my doctorate? I’m the discoverer of mermaids?”

Stan paused in thought. “Well, technically I discovered it first, it saved me,” he said. “What if I get my doctorate first?”

Wendy’s brow raised with skepticism. “Then I suppose I’d have to find some way to make it look like you died in a tragic accident on this expedition,” she said succinctly. “No one would know you were the one to discover them first.” Wendy placed the back of her hand against her forehead in mock maidens woe as she signed dramatically. “Sorry Stanley, but nothing’s going to stand in the way of my doctorate, and pigs will _ fly _ , before you get yours before mine.”

She looked at him solemnly before they both burst out laughing, unable to keep the act up any longer. 

Boredom eventually set in once more, as the sniggering petered out into silence, interrupted only by the chopping of waves and Stan was staring idly at a patch of water when he noticed a grey shape beneath the surface.

“W-Wendy look!” Stan excitedly pointed out. Wendy turned away from her sonar readouts and peered over his side of the boat as the grey shape moved from his side of the boat to hers. They both switched over to her side and she smiled a manic grin at him. “Quick Stan, try to bait it closer with a fish!” 

Stan fetched the last limp few fish at the bottom of the mostly empty bucket, and tossed one of them into the general direction of the grey shape. The grey shape paused, before it started getting closer and clearer. It rushed to the edge of the boat as it broke the surface tension with a mighty splash, sending water flying everywhere and showering Stan and Wendy.

A series of squeaks and clicks announced its breaching, and Stan and Wendy stood there with matching stupid grins on their faces as the face of a smiling bottlenose dolphin looked back at them and chattered excitedly.

  
“Look Stan,” Wendy said pointing “It’s your dolphin!”

Two more grey bottle-nosed individuals swam around their boat, clamouring for fish with little high pitched squeaks and clicks.

“Told you it was dolphins.” Wendy laughed, as she reached her hand into Stan’s bucket and tossed more fish out into the water. Baiting the dolphins closer to the boat, Stan and Wendy managed to record some biometric data and tagged the friendly dolphins with trackers, before they ran out of fish and the bottle noses got bored of them, and swam off to play in the shipwreck.

“That was slightly disappointing. All this build up over fantasy fish, and it was dolphins after all.” Stan said.

“Did it need to be something else?” Wendy asked. “Isn’t real life exciting enough without mermaids?”

Stan pursed his lip, “I suppose you’re right.”

He zipped up his research bag, tucking his notebook into its depths. “Do you think they’ll be ok, what with the oil in the water and stuff?” Stan asked, he couldn’t help the note of concern in his voice as the dolphins frolicked in the tainted water.

“We can come back again tomorrow to mop up some of the oil and clean it from their skin if they’re still in the area.” Wendy said, passing him his oar so they could begin the arduous journey back to the S.S Casa Bonita. 

“Wendy, you’re going to bankrupt me on buckets of KFC I’m going to owe Cartman here, seriously.” Stan complained, grimacing at the visualization of yet another sitting with Cartman over returning to this site yet again the next day.

“I’ll buy this round for him.” she offered. “It’s not right to just let these animals poison themselves when we could be doing something about it. Especially since humans are the ones who put this poison here in the first place. I won’t sit idly by and let it happen.” she said with conviction. 

“If Cartman has an issue with it, he can take it up with me.” she finished, mind made up.

Stan smiled at her proudly. Wendy was steely minded at times, and couldn’t be swayed when she knew she was doing the right thing. It was something he admired about her, and part of what inspired him to join her in her environmental activism. 

“Alright then, lets head back, and come back tomorrow to clean up.” Stan said, matching her rhythm as they made the trip back to Cartman’s yacht.

Stan thought back to Wendy’s sketch while he rowed. The mermaid Wendy had drawn was very pretty. She had drawn the mermaid with luscious red hair like the Disney princess, but put a little more marine biology into her interpretation of the mermaid. She had given the creature gills and forgone a nose for one thing, and the gills had rested prettily on the mermaid’s neck in rows of red, lining its throat. The mermaid had webbed hands, and scales running up its forearms like armour, the fins were a muted grey-blue while the spines were a vibrant red matching her hair. It’s tail was a rich, sea green that whipped behind the creature before wrapping delicately around a dark anchor like a seahorse. The tail fluke was mammalian in nature, fluked like a sea lion’s signifying its land origins as a ‘homo ichthyius’. The fins on the tail were much more fish-like, they were also decorated, extravagant and showy like a beta fish. It looked to be a very ethereal creature and Stan admired the artwork, but truth be told, he didn’t think it looked much like a real mermaid. It looked too much like a creature that took the best features from a collection of marine animals, composited to a functional, if showy whole. It looked too angelic, too perfect, like a seraph from the sea. Stan considered what he’d picture a mermaid to look like. He decided it would make much more sense if it more closely resembled other mammals of the sea, so a torpedo like body, none of those fan-like fins or amphibian webbing, although perhaps its fingers would be slightly more fin-like. Perhaps it’d be like an orca whale, with an impressive backfin that soared above the surface like a shark when the orca swam close to the seas surface, striking fear into the hearts of seals. He pictured the mermaid as a rustic red colour, which would appear black in the depths of sea, a dark and foreboding shape as it stalked the ocean floor for its prey. That mermaid, Stan decided, looked a lot more like a creature he’d like to encounter in the wild.

Alas, Stan sighed, it was pure fantasy. He should really get back to worrying about what he and Wendy were going to say to Cartman to try beg him to come back to this site again tomorrow.


	4. Glimpsed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He waved, and the figure waved back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ey a next day update bc I felt really bad about being slow with the last chapter.

With his promised buckets of KFC now numbering six, Cartman had yet again sailed them to the wreckage of the freight ship the next day.

“Geeze why don’t I just set up anchor here guys, since you seem to love it so much, no need to complete the rest of the trip right?” he had muttered to himself. 

Wendy and Stan had elected to take separate boats this time, to make cleaning the wreck much faster so they could actually hoist anchor early and make some progress in their trip, as they weren’t even halfway through the route they needed to survey.

When the rest of the crew learnt why they were back, they volunteered to help with the cleanup, pairing off into the two different lifeboats to cover more ground. Wendy paired up with Butters and Stan paired up with Heidi. Craig was kept on the S.S Casa Bonita to help keep the ship running while the crew were away and Cartman, was busy being unhelpful as always.

The dolphins made a show of returning, entertaining the crew and even helpfully pointing out areas they’d have otherwise missed cleaning. Dolphins were always impressing Stan with their displays of intelligence, figuring out when they wanted to play and when they wanted to work. Butters had gone back on board and come back out with fishy treats for the dolphins too. 

With more crew, they made quick work of the oil and debris floating in the water, and in no time at all the sun was setting, and the crew were enjoying themselves a hearty meal and a job well done. It was nice, having a tangible effect on the environment cleaning up after human disaster, Stan thought, as he shared a toast with the crew.

“Oh gee whiz, all that cleaning sure made me famished!” Butters cried, digging into his fish burger.

“Oh please, you call this food Butters?” Cartman complained from his heaped plate. “This shit is weak, a real meal has some red meat in it. Like pork, or steak. Or some chicken at the very least, where’s my goddamn grease Wendy? Where’s the fucking bacon?” he yelled, stabbing at his fish burger.

Wendy pursed her lips. “Cartman, you should be thanking me that there’s no goddamn grease being used to clog up your arteries any more. We actually need the captain alive,  _ no matter how little you actually do on this boat, _ ” She had said that last bit under her breath so that no one else but Stan had heard her. He grinned at her as she sent a secretive wink his way. 

“Excuse me Testaburger, but I am not fat. I’m big-boned and as captain of this ship I demand some goddamn steak” Cartman shrieked, “My meeeem would cook me steak!”

Wendy put her hands on her hips impatiently. “Well I’m sorry, Captain, but in case you didn’t notice, we didn’t pack any steak with us, as any steak packed wouldn’t last the month we’re out here at sea. And even if we did pack any, I wouldn’t cook any for you, because I’m not your  _ meeeeem _ .” she said condescendingly.

“Can you two quit it, I’m trying to enjoy a goddamn dinner here without developing an aneurysm” Craig complained, prodding at his burger with a fork like it had personally offended him.

Heidi nodded, “That’s right, if you two are going to argue any more, I might just take my food outside where it’s nice and quiet for a change.”

Wendy turned to her alarmed, “It’s freezing Heidi, you’ll catch your death out there.”   


Heidi rolled her eyes. “And I’ll go deaf if I have to put up with you two in here.”

Under the commotion, Stan discretely took out a metal flask from his backpack under the table and spiked his drink. He only had four of these flasks left stashed in his room, and he was trying to make them last but these two loudmouths were making it very difficult with their constant bickering. Sometimes he swears the alcohol is the only thing keeping him from losing his marbles with their constant fighting. He took a deep swig from his now alcoholic fruit juice and winced at the barely noticeable burn as it coursed down his throat. He didn't spike enough to get comfortably buzzed, but the tingling beginnings of one tickled in his head and he let out a sigh of relief. He could pretend it was enough to drown those two out.

“Come on you guys, let’s try not to fight at the table” Butters interjected, nervously trying to play mediator as always.

“Well I’m  _ trying, _ but this _ whore  _ here is holding out on me with the fucking steak.” Cartman whinged.

Wendy’s eyes hardened as she slammed her fist on the table, causing all the cutlery to jump and clutter. “I’d like to see you feed yourself for a month you fucking gluttonous pig! For the last time, we have no red meat on board because it would’ve long gone bad if we tried. Unless you want to live off goddamn  _ spam _ for the rest of the trip for your precious  _ red meat _ , I suggest you fucking consider shutting your fucking mouth and appreciating the fresh fish Butters here was so generous enough to fish for us because not all of us want to eat over-processed crap like you!”

“Please don’t drag me into this Wendy,” Butters mumbled.

Fed up, Stan stood up abruptly, his chair scraping hard against the hardwood floor as he did so, “If no one’s going to mind, I think I’m going to take Heidi’s advice and eat outside,” he announced, quickly turning and marching away before the squabbling could suck him in too. He knew Wendy would demand he back her up, and he always did, even if he knew it was a hopeless argument simply because it was against Cartman. It was one of the main reasons they broke up. Wendy always felt like Stan wasn’t willing to take her side in important matters, whereas Stan wanted to pick and choose his battles, because he felt it was fruitless to fight against Cartman. Wendy fundamentally disagreed.  _ “We can’t let people like that go through life unopposed or others will think they’re right because no one dares challenge their bigoted ideals”  _ Wendy had said hotly in his face. He supposes she was right, from a moral standpoint but fighting an unwinnable fight got exhausting after the fiftieth time, and Stan just gave up supporting her unwinnable battles. She took it as a betrayal, and Stan couldn’t really blame her, but she was stronger than him. He wasn’t afraid to admit it. She deserved someone strong, would stand beside her no matter the fight, and that someone just wasn’t him.

Stan stood on the deck in the setting sun and felt the evening breeze flowing through his hair. He’d elected to put on his poofball hat again and it helped fend off the biting cold of the ocean at night. Despite meeting the dolphins out at the wreckage the other day, Stan still couldn’t help but feel like he was missing some part of the puzzle. The logical part of his brain reasoned that it was the best explanation for how he’d been helped back onto the rowboat, but that itching, non-stop theorising part of his mind kept nagging him it didn’t make any sense. What did he see that was red? How did it saw through the rope tangling his legs? Dolphin beaks shouldn’t be strong enough to shred through rope like that, he was certain it was cut with the knife when he felt something take it from him. How could a dolphin have taken his knife and used it to stab his research bag back into the side of the rowboat after everything was over? Last he checked dolphins didn’t have opposable thumbs. The inconsistencies kept nagging at him, yet every alternative he could think of was fantastical and ridiculous. Stan was distracted from his musings when Craig elbowed him suddenly. 

"Got any booze to split?" he asked. Stan looked at him with feigned innocence.

"Excuse me?"

Damn guy should wear a bell or something, Craig moved silent as a cat sometimes and Stan found himself startled more than once by him during this expedition. 

"Come off it, don't play dumb. Not to me." Craig leaned against the railing next to Stan. "I saw you at dinner. You might fool Cartman and Wendy but I know you smuggled some in Marsh.”

Craig started fiddling with an engine screw he picked from the depths of his pockets in his fingers and Stan couldn’t help but feel mildly threatened. Like Craig would shank him with it if he thought it was the effort for a few extra drops of shitty vodka.

“You'd have busted a screw loose by now if you hadn't. I know you Marsh, and you aren't a Saint, so come clean. The only way I know you’ve lasted this long without throwing someone overboard is if you've been loading up on the booze, so now be nice and share." Craig held out his unoccupied hand expectantly. Stan considered refusing and telling Craig to fuck off, but he knew if he did, he might just come back to his room tomorrow and find Craig had come in while he was sleeping and disassembled his bed out from under him and stolen his entire stash from his room while he was at it. So with some measure of reluctance, he fished his hand into his backpack and relinquished his flask to him.

“Thanks, ‘ppreciate it.”

"Don’t drink it all at once, I don’t have a lot left and we’ve got twenty days of this trip left to get through.” Stan warned.

Craig shrugged non-committedly, and Stan scowled as the other took a gulp from the flask, sighing and smacking his lips. "Ah, sobriety is overrated," he commented.

"I don't know how comfortable I am with the idea that the ships engineer wants to get himself shit-faced." Stan commented.

Craig flipped him the bird without looking as he took another mouthful. "Up yours Marsh, nobody asked you."

Stan moved to the side as Craig hung his head over the railing when the burn kicked in.

"God Marsh what did you bring, pure fucking moonshine? It tastes fucking shit."

Stan scowled."Well, I wasn't planning on drinking it straight from the fucking flask like you are dipshit." he folded his arms, affronted. "And it's Russian vodka for your information. Not that knock off stuff from Skeeters either. I mean my dad fucking bought it off some Russian black market and I found his stash and took a bottle or two for myself."

Craig looked at him respectfully "Fucking sweet dude. I’ll be sure to mix in some fucking soda or something next time though."

Craig seemed to drop off then, blinking owlishly, he set the flask by Stan’s side and folded himself onto the on-deck lounge chair usually reserved for Cartman, having had enough of both Stan’s liquor and company. 

Content to let Craig doze on the ship deck, Stan took out his notebook, his dinner long forgotten. In the privacy of his room, he had made some newer sketches. After Wendy’s absurd sketch of the ethereal mermaid in his book, Stan had started drawing his own version of what he imagined a mermaid to look like. He drew his version looking more muscular from spending their days constantly swimming in the sea, hunting for dinner and battling sharks at night. Nothing like the dainty thing Wendy had drawn on the opposite page. His mermaid had sharp fangs used for rending fish into little pieces. Nothing chewed its food out at sea, and weak, human teeth would be worthless in a fish eat fish world. Stan pictured his mermaid was hardly going to have cinderblock teeth for chewing on coral either. Gone were the pretty fins that lined the back of Wendy’s mermaid and in its place was a large dorsal fin that would strike fear into the hearts of sailors as sharks do. The human features almost looked alien, with how they were altered and more streamlined to more fit marine life. 

Stan looked from the book to the sea again, the blooming blood red of the sky taunting him with that blasted, unforgettable colour. It was kind of romantic, in a foreboding way. Perfect for waxing on about impossible things through sketch or through song. In fact, when he was younger, his dad had attempted to take him fishing once or twice. Being a complete novice, they nearly always came back empty-handed, so Stan had taken the opportunity in his youth to hone his musical skills. And when his father had started blaming his music for the lack of catches, he had started his habit of drawing fish in his sketchbooks. Feeling nostalgic, Stan decided he’d try it here too. He’d tie a length of rope from the rowboat and let it trail behind the S.S Casa Bonita, tethered to the deck so he wouldn’t be left out at sea, but a way to get some distance between the bustle of the boat and the calm of the open ocean. That might help him think, might get his creative juices flowing again, just like in his youth. He took out his guitar from his room and set himself on the bench, pushing the rowboat away from the main boat with a kick. Craig snuffled on the deck of the ship and Stan paused to check he wasn’t about to roll off from the lounge chair, satisfied Craig wasn't in immediate danger he set off. 

The boat slowly drifted from the S.S Casa Bonita as the sun gleamed like a glowing ruby on a bed of sparkling diamonds. Stan sighed as he leaned back, lightly strumming on his guitar. He always liked to play the guitar by himself, it was a comfortable calm that let the notes come easier to him when he was writing music. Back at home, he’d always write music in his room, but here out at sea, he was always within ear distance of Cartman on the main ship, who made no hesitation in telling Stan his little emo finger tinkering on his guitar was too fucking gay for his boat thanks. So Stan took to writing his songs out by himself on the lifeboats tugging him along at night. 

He was lightly strumming chords, vaguely carrying on with a new song he’d been writing about breaking up with Wendy. It was melancholic with bittersweet hope for a new beginning and cherishing happy times behind them, and celebrating the happy sadness when they had to part. Cheesy as fuck he knew, but sometimes the inner emo kid in him liked to wax poetic about broken hearts and could have beens.

The boat was gently tugged along by the S.S Casa Bonita, softly cresting the dark waves and making a particularly picturesque backdrop to the light strumming of Stan’s guitar, it probably would’ve made for a great music video shoot.

After a while, the salt in the air got too much for him and Stan’s asthma started acting up, so Stan paused in his playing to take a huff from his inhaler. It was such a pain, not being a fully functioning human being when something as simple as breathing took its toll on him when the air was too salty, or too humid, or even nothing wrong with it at all sometimes. He looked out to the water as he puffed, lost in his self misery as he gently breathed in the medication. So lost in fact, he almost didn’t register that there was something looking back at him.

Stan started, and squinted, looking out at the water more carefully. There, out at sea, maybe ten yards away, was a head that peeked out of the water. The eyes were just barely above the surface, and seemed to illuminate in the low light. Stan looked back towards the S.S Casa Bonita before turning back to the figure, sure that his eyes were playing tricks on him. He looked slowly back to his inhaler. Surely, it’s impossible to spike an inhaler with like, magic mushrooms or some shit right? Cartman wouldn’t mess with something as important as his inhaler would he? But Stan looked out at the water again and the figure was still there, solid and unmoving and convincingly real. 

“Hello?” he called, calling out to the figure. It was almost disconcerting, as the figure continued to stare him down. Has it even blinked this whole time? Stan wondered, as it continued to look at Stan unflinchingly. A stroke of inspiration struck Stan, and he lifted his hand in a slow wave, and astoundingly, the figure waved back. Well perhaps waved was a strong term, but Stan thinks he saw digits rise from below the water’s surface and wiggle slightly in his direction in some facsimile of a wave. The light was too low to make out what the figure looked like clearly, so Stan fumbled with his newly repaired research bag for a bit, before pulling out a torch and shining its light on the figure. The figure was lit up as a pale-skinned, red-haired youth whose eyes glittered a sharp, vivid green before he snarled and quickly pulled himself beneath the surface of the water. 

“Hey wait!” Stan called, but it was too late. There was a flash of the grey, reddish mottled fluke which flicked above the surface as the figure retreated. Stan scanned the water around him with the flashlight fervently for another flash of that brilliant red, but to no avail.

Stan was alone on the water, and the last vestiges of sunlight retreated beneath the horizon as the day ended. He looked back down at his inhaler, sitting innocuously in his bag. “Dude, the fuck is in my meds?” he wondered out loud.

He then started as Wendy called out to him from the boat, something about Cartman demanding he swab some infinitesimally unimportant section of the deck no doubt, and Stan reluctantly pulled his boat back towards the deck of the yacht.

Swearing at the events of this evening, Stan swore he was never going to drink before taking his medication again. 


	5. I See You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan recklessly thrust his face under the water, the only regard for his safety the strong grip his fingers had on the edges of his little rowboat. And an astonished face looked back up at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ey probably won't update the fic for a bit after this. After this chapter, I have like 2 chapters of very, very, very unedited writing. Its like first draft stages and it's so unrefined I want to drown myself in shame so unfortunately it might be more than two weeks until the next update. That and drawing takes a lot of time. I have like 5 sketches lined up for the next two chapters, 2 of which are planned for the next chapter so it'll take a while to finish those two after editing the chapter into something presentable and readable. Criticism and comments welcome, I feel like my writing gets a lot clumsier and less refined and more word vomit verbose as I'm editing less trying to make up for the lack of updates the past couple weeks. Anyway, enjoy this fic, and a pic I very much enjoyed digitally painting, underwater scenes is fun.

The next morning, in the wee hours of the day before any of the other crew members were awake, Stan snuck from his room to the deck of the boat out and lowered the tethered boat back into the water with his guitar in hand. There was no way, yet there was every way that what he saw yesterday was real. It was the only explanation that could explain everything that had happened to him on his first trip to the freight shipwreck, and yet it posed so many more questions than it answered. It was a humanoid! With opposable thumbs! No doubt intelligent enough to save his sorry ass from drowning, and dexterous enough to return his research bag and saw through the rope with a knife. But first, he had to be sure he wasn’t hallucinating off some bizarre food poisoning from the night before. Sure Stan had felt fine when he turned in for the night, but he was pretty sure that people who were fine didn’t hallucinate figures in the water waving at them. And yet, Stan couldn’t help but hope.

He rowed out the boat from the S.S Casa Bonita just as he had the night before, and reset the scene to the best of his ability. He gulped down a few mouthfuls of alcohol, spilling some on his shirt in his haste, played a few notes from his songs, puffed on his inhaler, and looked out to the water eagerly. The calm ocean waves lapped at the edges of the boat for about thirty minutes uneventfully and Stan sagged in disappointment. 

Stupid, of course, he didn't see what he thought he saw yesterday. He didn’t know what he truly expected, another substance-induced hallucination of Ariel maybe, but he was disappointed all the same. The musings with Wendy that afternoon must've really struck a chord with his active imagination, combined with his meds and Russian vodka or something. Or maybe he was being too hopeful, what guarantee was there that whatever he had spotted last night would still be near the boat in the morning? The sun began to rise above the horizon, bathing the ocean in its warm rays, when Stan noticed something moving beneath the boat. Hardly daring to believe his luck, Stan called out a tentative "Hello?" looking at the blurry shape more closely.

Stan couldn't deny, whatever was moving beneath the waves was definitely mottled with some warm shade of dark reddish-orange. The swirling dark shapes made it difficult to pinpoint the exact shape of the creature through the distortion of the water. However even as he looked, the colour faded as whatever it was retreated deeper into the water.

"Wait, come back! " Stan called, desperate, leaning over the edge of the boat precariously. A sudden flash of the undesired experience of falling into the water again washed over him, and as an alternative, an impulsive thought struck him. Then, without thinking over it too much or preamble, he leaned his torso over the edge of the boat, fingers clinging to the edges tightly to avoid totally tipping himself over, and plunged his face into the icy water, desperate for a clear glimpse of that elusive creature beneath the sea, trying to confirm his gut feelings once and for all.

Stan blinked, vision overwhelmingly turquoise and distorted through the water, his eyes stinging in the salty ocean, vision hazy still adapting while his eyes blinked away the discomfort and adjusting to the watery vision before him. And a wide-eyed astonished face looked back. 

It looked like a boy. Okay, maybe more of a young man. It looked like a perfectly normal if not pale human floating just below the surface of the water under Stan, ogling back at him in astonishment if it were not for the very non-human very fluked tail that swept out below him, blending seamlessly with his bare human torso. He was pale in complexion, almost grey even. His shocked face sported widened, vivid, green eyes, his pinkish mouth partly agape with shock as he stared back at the idiot air breather who just recklessly thrust his face into the water. He had a striking head of fiery red hair that moved like an amorphous halo above him. Stan stared, a thin stream of silvery jittering bubbles escaping from his mouth as the breath left him at the mottled reddish-orange and grey tail that swept underneath and out to the side from the boy, the pattern speckling into more distinct spots closer to the fluke and fins before fading into abstract swathes closer to the join between boy and cetacean. A great dorsal fin rose from partway down the tail, peaked in the rustic shade at the hook of the fin. 

Stan forgot to breathe, but was abruptly reminded of his fundamental survival instincts when the breath ran out from his lungs and he inhaled on instinct, choking on the saltwater and spitting out soft jiggling bubbles of precious oxygen. He pulled back hard with the grip his hands had on the side of the boat, his head flung out of the water spluttering, breathing in deep lungfuls of air as the water leaked from his saturated dark locks into his blinking eyes, clearing his lungs for one big clean lungful of air before once more plunging his head into the water to catch a follow-up glimpse of the unbelievable sight beneath the waves. But while he had expunged his lungs of water, the mermaid (?) boy had turned tail and swum off into the deep, a wispy trail of bubbles the only evidence he had ever been there, leaving Stan glancing around at only empty ocean in search of the mysterious boy with the fire-red hair. 

Stan threw his head back out of the water, gasping with disbelief at what he had just seen. It wasn’t a hallucination, the figure from last night was real! He had discovered a mermaid? The situation was so ridiculous and surreal that Stan started laughing hysterically while he shook his head free of the water like a wet dog.

“I discovered a fucking mermaid.” He giggled to himself. “It was an honest to god fucking mermaid!”

A voice interrupted Stan’s fit of near hysteria as it echoed from the deck of the S.S Casa Bonita. "Stan, what are you doing, are you trying to drown yourself?" Wendy screamed. Stan winced from the shrill shriek in her voice, though he guessed he must’ve looked a sight, dripping with water on a moored off rowboat in the wee hours of the morning.

"Why are you trying to stop him?" Stan thinks he hears Craig stage mutter. 

"Come back on board Stan and stop trying to drown yourself, we've got a lot of ground to cover and Cartman wants you to wipe down his cabin or something, don't make me come down there and get you! " Wendy calls. 

Stan roughly toweled down his hair with his jacket and set down his guitar on the bottom of the rowboat to begin pulling the boat back to the safety of the S.S Casa Bonita. He grinned to himself, unable to stifle his chuckling at the implications of his encounter. It was real. It was undeniably real, it was one thing to hallucinate once, but twice wasn’t a coincidence and it was looking pretty undeniably real! Unless Stan had a psychosis on his hands. 

There was… a mermaid, or some shit following him! Putting it to words made Stan blanch, it made it seem so much more  _ real  _ and solid, but also  _ surreal _ because it was a _ mermaid _ . Should he tell Wendy? His instincts say yes, but she'd say he was off his rocker without any solid evidence. He could almost hear her now.

_ "Stan, you know I love you like a brother, but if you want me to buy that you saw an honest to God mermaid you're going to have to give me more than just your word. My scientific credibility is on the line here and the last thing I want to be attached to my name is Doctor Testaberger, chasing mermaids. _ "

He couldn't tell her, not yet. He had to somehow prove it, some solid evidence. Something that would convince both Wendy and the greater scientific community that Stan wasn’t a hallucinating nutjob. Maybe he should snap a picture? That would be the quickest most surefire way to show someone the mermaid existed short of straight trying to lure it out in front of a waiting audience, which Stan thought would be highly unlikely, given how often the mermaid was swimming away from him. So a picture would be his best bet, but how would he lure it out long enough to take one? It seemed to be interested enough in Stan for it to be following him from the shipwreck, but it was fast when it didn't want to be seen. What had brought it out the past few times? Stan wondered. Clearly it could swim away when it didn’t want to be seen, so something had to have interested it enough to get it to allow itself to be observed. Stan paused, thinking to each encounter he had with the mermaid. Yesterday’s encounter he had successfully recreated this morning, so something about those two encounters was interesting to the mermaid, interesting enough to risk exposing itself. So what was it about these encounters that fascinated the mermaid? Stan had been drinking, taking his meds and playing music. He doubted the mermaid was interested in the prior two things, it probably didn’t even know Stan was taking meds or drinking, so perhaps it was attracted to his music? 

_ Wow _ , Stan thought as he flushed slightly. How flattering, he had his first fan. And it was a fish. Typical, there was a joke in there somewhere for his friends to rip on Stan for, he was sure of it. 

That settled it he decided. Stan was going to go out tonight, while everyone was having dinner, and he was going to snap himself a photo of a mermaid. Would this make him a super successful researcher, the discoverer of mermaids? Or would his photo be denounced as a fake, subjecting him to eternal ridicule in the scientific community? Probably the latter, but he would know his proof was real, even if everyone else brushed it off as doctored evidence. He would have the self-satisfied confirmation that he had discovered a mermaid, his own accomplishment before he even got his Ph.D. and that was good enough for him. 


	6. Picture Perfect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan goes out again this time with a plan to take a photo of his elusive mermaid friend. Pics or it didn't happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO. Sorry this chapter was late, it was meant to go up on Sunday BUT I kiiiind of may have written like up to chapter 11 roughly? Chapters 8-11 needs some serious editing work in the very first drafting stages but all I could so the past few weeks was write, write, write, and edit chapter 6 and 7 a little in there too, so I ended up spending Monday and Tuesday working on the drawings so I could post them and not get too carried away writing the story. It's like my mind is either set on drawing or writing but never both on the same day ahaha oops. Anyway, sorry for the wait. Next chapter will go up when I decide what illustration to accompany it and then actually draw it.

The day couldn't end fast enough, Stan got sloppy on his work and marked his data wrong three times before Wendy got fed up with him and shooed him out of the lab calling him a nuisance more than a research partner. So Stan resigned himself to the rest of the day fulfilling Eric's increasingly mundane errands. Stan swears Cartman was less actually requesting help and more getting off on his power trip of authority over him on board his ship. He spent his free time shooting the shit with Butters, talking about meaningless things like how their parents were doing, whether Butters thought the Broncos were going to win this season, and what fish Butters was hoping to catch for dinner today. 

"You’re a really good fisherman Butters, I can't wait for dinner tonight. It sounds really good!" Stan praised. Truth be told, the fish wasn’t terrible, it was fresh fish you can hardly complain about that, but it was hardly the true reason Stan was ecstatic about dinner. Rather the real reason Stan couldn’t wait, was because tonight was the night, that after eating he was going to put into action his plan to snap a photograph of his elusive mermaid admirer.

"Oh gee, thanks Stan but you know all I'm getting are anchovies and herring if I'm lucky, and I'm pretty sure Eric's sick of them now," said Butters, but he preened under the praise just the same.

Stan grunted as he wiped down the railing Butters was leaning his fishing poles against, Cartman wanted the rails so clean he ‘could see his own reflection’, a task made all the more impossible by the constant spray of the sea as the waves hit the sides of the ship. The water stains were neverending. "He should be thankful you're fishing his dinner at all, the only thing he's contributed to this trip is the boat. He didn’t even pay for the fuel, Wends and I had to spend some of our research fund on that. I appreciate your fishing Butters, your catch is gonna be great."

Stan finished wringing out his washcloth, the suds coming out as clear as he could get them. The railing would probably be spotless for all of twenty seconds before they hit another rough patch of water that would undoubtedly leave another encrusting of salt residue.

"Well gee Stan, thanks, it’s not often I get thanked on this ship.” Butters stammered, his kind eyes practically had stars in them. “By the way Stan, I’ve been meaning to ask, what's got you in such a tizzy about dinner tonight? You're usually pretty indifferent to it all, um no offense." Butters started reeling in another line, engrossed in his work, but fully content on chatting. 

Stan winced and busied himself prying barnacles from the bottom of the rowboat he planned to take out that evening. He thought for a moment of an answer to give Butters that would be acceptable to the naive boy. He didn't expect Butters of all people to really question his motives, and now he had to think of an answer before Butters started getting curious why he was taking so long to formulate an answer. Butters was sweet, he really was, and he'd believe Stan if Stan told him he saw a mermaid that morning. But Butters was also awful at keeping secrets and was Cartman’s first mate. If Stan told Butters what he was up to, the whole crew would know by sundown and he’d be crucified by Cartman for wasting time chasing fairytales instead of doing his menial tasks. 

After an acceptable span of silence had passed and Stan had made a valiant effort in removing the barnacles from the rowboat, he answered vaguely. "I'm actually writing a song tonight. I’ve been feeling inspired by this whole trip and I thought I’d go out for some privacy on the rowboat after dinner tonight to write some music. It’s been a little while since I penned my last song.”

Butters blinked. "Oh, I didn't think the ocean was the best place to play music, what with you needing to play over the waves and all. Oh, and the thought of me dropping anything in the ocean is giving me the butterflies in m’stomach. Ooh.” He clutched at his midsection in demonstration. “I already almost lost one of my fishing poles yesterday, Eric was so mad! I don’t think I could handle taking an instrument out there. Oh, but what do I know, I know I'm not the most artistic type."

“Yeah you gotta be really careful that you don’t drop anything, but it’s worth it. The atmosphere is like, all calming and mellow. It’s really inspirational to me.” Stan encouraged. If Butters believed he was going out after dinner to play music, he’d spread the rumour and people like Craig might stop doing a suspicious double take, convinced he was going out to get sloshed or something out by himself every time he went out at night. Scratch that, Craig would think Stan was out writing songs _and_ getting sloshed in the process. "Yeah, I dunno dude something about the ocean is like, super poetic almost you know? I could write songs all day on the water if I didn’t have to listen to Cartman whinging at me all the time. it’s like, super mellow, brings a new vibe to my head when I write music." 

Butters nodded solemnly. "I think I know. The oceans all infinite and blue, really puts your life into perspective or something. Artists have been painting the ocean for a really long time too, so you’re not the only one who takes inspiration from the ocean Stan, I think I get it.”

Butters pulled in his latest catch, assessing it quickly before shaking his head.

“Aw, you’re just a teeny tiny fry fish you are! Back you go little fella.”

There was something strangely endearing about the juxtaposing picture, the way Butters pet at the gaping gills of the slowly suffocating fish like he was placating a particularly fussy cat and cooed at it with his calming tone, before unhooking the fish and tossing it back into the ocean like one would toss a beer can after crushing it to one’s forehead.

Butters baited his line and tossed it back to sea once more. “I can't wait to hear what you come up with Stan, I always liked the songs you played in school, even the angry ones when your parents moved to a weed farm." He paused, looking up at Stan with wide eyes. "Oh you were planning on playing for us weren't you?" 

Stan hesitated, the lie was getting too deep, too specific, too fast, and he wondered if he should just bail out of it now. Laugh it off and tell Butters his music idea was stupid and just plot a different way to take a photo of his mermaid. Then again. The lie wasn’t really a _full_ fib, he _was_ actually working on some new music a few days ago, but it wasn't exactly going anywhere yet, and certainly wasn’t in any presentable state where he could play for anyone in the upcoming days. Maybe while he was chasing mermaids he should consider actually finishing the song he was working on, that way he had something to show for himself even if he failed to capture a photograph of the mermaid. 

"Sure Butters." Stan gave what he hoped was his most winning smile. He tried not to look too guilty as he packed away his cleaning supplies. "You’ll be the first to hear it, I swear."

Butters smiled back, an innocent dopey look on his face once more. 

"I look forward to hearing it Stan!"

The conversation came to a close, as Stan heard the faint wheedling of another insistent _“Staaaaaaaaaan!”_ coming from Cartman’s room below decks.

“See you at dinner Butters, I think I can hear Cartman’s blood pressure rising. Talk to you again soon.”

“Bye Stan, tell Eric Hi from me would ya?”

Stan smiled good-naturedly at him. “Butters, you say hi to Cartman every day, I think he’s getting sick of it.”

“Naw, he likes it inside. I can tell.” Butters whispered conspiratorially. With that ending remark, Stan made his way below decks to bend to the whims of the so-called big-boned captain.

* * *

That evening when most people had eaten their fill, Butters had invited Stan to sing sea shanties with him, Heidi, Wendy and Cartman’s parrot, whom he had surprisingly done a good job training, while Wendy elected to play on a small flute. Stan had declined, but told him he appreciated Butters thinking to include him, but Stan was really feeling like writing his songs and sometimes you’ve just gotta seize the moment before inspiration escapes you. Craig teased him about going off by himself all emo-like because he was too embarrassed to play his break up songs in front of Wendy while Heidi told him to lay off.

Wendy frowned at Stan’s answer as she put down her flute. "Is that what you were doing this morning out on the water Stan, writing music?"

Stan nodded, washing his cutlery under the warm soapy water and trying not to trip over or look like he was up to anything other than a musically inspiring boating. "Yep, exactly. You just caught me at an awkward moment."

Wendy stared deadpan straight-faced, entirely unconvinced by his bullshit. She knew him too well. "An awkward moment that warranted attempting to drown yourself sticking your head into the water like a pelican?"

There was a pregnant silence at the table where people looked up at Stan with curiosity, waiting for him to explain away _that_ incident.

"I um, needed to clear my head?" he offered, a nervous grin pasted on his face. "I was kind of falling asleep out there, and I thought a shock to the system would help wake myself up. Probably wasn’t one of my best moments I’ll admit, but I was half asleep, I wasn’t exactly thinking straight."

Wendy still looked at Stan shrewdly, not wholly convinced but convinced enough not to push further. Craig didn't give a fuck and never looked up from his food, Heidi went back to picking at her salad, Butters went back to coaching the parrot over the melody of the song and Cartman was still refusing to eat until Wendy conjured some ribs from thin air. Stan would say all this fasting was doing wonders for Eric's diet, but everyone knew he snuck into the kitchens late at night to stuff his face after everyone turned in for the night. He wasn’t exactly quiet about it and it always sounded like a party of hogs having a good time.

"Alright then, well don't let us keep you waiting, go write your pussy hippy ocean songs Stan." Cartman said, dismissing him. “Maybe you’ll find a mermaid girlfriend who’ll actually like that junk you call music.”

Stan stood up, attempting to not look too alarmed by Cartman’s scarily accurate quip. "Maybe I will!" Stan huffed. “Thanks for the dinner Wendy, you’re awesome as always. Have fun tonight guys, don’t stay up too late singing sea shanties.”

The playful trill of the flute and Butter’s cheery, if off-key, voice started up again coupled with the raspy cadence of the surprisingly intelligent parrot. The warming tones reminding Stan of sillier times trailed off as he went to collect his prepacked camera and supplies from his cabin before preparing the lifeboat once more.

He had left at a good time, the golden hour had just started and he had a good half an hour of sunlight at least before the light would start getting too dark to take a photo without a flash. The camera was equipped with a flash, but Stan didn’t want to risk scaring off the mermaid for good, so that was a last resort. 

Stan fed out the tether line from the S.S Cash Bonita slightly longer than he had before, giving more space between the two vessels. He was hoping to give himself and his mysterious follower slightly more privacy from the commotion on the boat and hopped in with his guitar and after much deliberation, an extra serving of dinner. Perhaps if his theory was wrong and the mermaid didn’t give two shits about Stan’s musical talents, he supposed he could try tempting the mermaid closer with a food offering. Food is the universal language of social get-togethers for humans isn’t it? Well, hopefully it was for mermaids.

Once sufficient distance had been reached between the rowboat and the main vessel, Stan quickly strummed his way through the song he had played yesterday, and looked around periodically for the tell-tale reddish form, or the sharp glint of distinctive green eyes. Failing to spot anything, Stan leaned back in puzzlement. Why wasn't the mermaid coming back? While it wasn’t exactly a perfect theory, Stan was convinced he was right about the music being the common factor between the mermaid’s repeat appearances.

Retracing his steps, he took another huff on his inhaler, and rummaged around in his bag for his flask before cursing to himself and sitting back down with a huff. Shit, of all the things he forgot his stash somewhere. In his eagerness to sneak away after dinner, he hadn’t even needed to self-medicate with the flask and now he’s gone and forgotten it. He then sat up with a start. _Oh shit_ , Stan blanched. Did he leave it in the dining room? If Wendy found it and took a look inside, he’d be dead for sure. She always hated it when he got drunk. Stan started jiggling his knee up and down as he mulled over it. He didn’t leave his flask out at dinner, it was in his room, he was ninety percent sure of it. Stan bit his lip, seventy percent. Maybe fifty-five? Fuck. Resigned to a potential future chewing out, Stan decided to switch tactics.

If the current song wasn’t bringing out the mermaid, maybe he needed to change it up a little, not just rinse and repeat every detail of the last encounters. Maybe it got bored of his current song? Stan deliberated for a moment before starting to play a song he hadn’t touched since he finished grade school, You Gotta Drive Hybrids. The first go was a little clunky, as Stan tried to remember the simple chords and the exact melody of the song before foregoing the original composition altogether and improvising a rough solo at the midway point. Still no sign of the mermaid. 

Stan was half tempted to dunk his head into the water again, convinced he just wasn't looking hard enough, maybe it was just underneath him again and all he had to do was look harder. But logic told him a mermaid that big couldn’t possibly hide completely under his boat unless it hung perfectly vertically underneath him, so Stan crossed off that possibility. After a while of fruitless modifications to You Gotta Drive Hybrids and mermaidless scouting, he simply sat back in his boat resigned. He should've known it was too much to hope the mermaid was actually following him for something as simple as music. The last few meetings were pure dumb luck, and he had squandered the photo op of a lifetime with nothing to show for it but an empty serving of stewed fish. He dumped the now cold herring remains over the edge of the boat and watched them as they floated on the surface pitifully. Of course the mermaid wasn’t following him. who would be interested in his music? The whales probably sound better than anything he could come up with, let alone the stupid songs he made in grade school. The discovery of a lifetime and he had nothing to prove it with. It’d be his biggest kept secret simply because he’d be written off to the looney bin if he ever told anybody about the time he spotted a mermaid. It was a shame too, Stan thought as he dejectedly tapped out a different beat on the side of his guitar. The mermaid was pretty cute too, in a delicate, non-human sort of way, Stan mused. He shook his head, clearing it of fluffy, wishful thoughts. No, what was he thinking? Cute or not he wasn't going to be seeing the boy again. The mermaid probably just got bored of Stan after this morning, having sated his curiosity watching the funny singing two legs man and went off to play with more of his mermaid friends. Stan started playing chords to the new song he was working on, a bit sadder than any of the other songs he’d ever written, when a pale hand grasped at the remains of the fish that were floating on the surface of the water and retreated back into the depths.

Stan gaped, his playing hand faltered but he didn't dare stop playing in case it vanished before his eyes. The small sample of fish floated back to the surface, but with a distinctive bite taken out from its midsection. Daring to draw closer, Stan took his guitar and peered over the water. He saw beneath the surface, fuzzy from the last vestiges of golden sunlight bending beneath the water, the face of the boy from before. His tail was a lot harder to see, turning dark in the evening light almost black, but the eyes seemed to glow with their own luminescence. 

As the sun started to wane and the first hints of dark purple started to bloom in the sky, Stan kept staring. His eyes were watering, as he’d tried to keep blinking to a minimum, scared if he blinked too much the boy would fade away like a mirage. He knew it was rude to stare, but it didn’t seem to matter to the mermaid who seemed content to simply keep looking. Somewhere along the way, Stan forgot to keep strumming his guitar, but it seemed not to matter as the boy drifted ever so slightly closer to the surface. Feeling bold, Stan waved, and there through the distortion of the water, Stan saw the mermaid wave back. It was closer now, close enough for a picture, Stan belatedly thought. Stan gently set the guitar aside and reached blindly for the camera, keeping his movements slow and unthreatening as to not alert the mermaid anything was happening. He tried to discreetly grip the camera. He noticed the mermaid eyeing the camera suspiciously as it slowly rose up to Stan’s face as he lifted it to take the photo. The eyes then widened, like they finally recognised what Stan was holding in his hands. He was panicked. The mermaid was going to bolt. Stan tried to finish lifting the camera to his face and squeezed the button as quickly as he could and he heard the telltale rapid flutter of the camera snapping about thirty photos in one second. However, the contents of which the photos contained Stan couldn’t say as Stan suddenly found himself with a faceful of mermaid. There was a sensation of cool, supple skin on his face. The crisp smell of ocean assaulted his senses and the vaguely sweet, salty smell of fish laced with sea lavender tickled his sinuses. The taste of marinated herring played across his tongue and It didn't quite register in his brain that the mermaid had just kissed him. Was kissing him. Was accidentally kissing him. Was face to face with him, as they both looked at each other in shock. Time seemed to freeze at that moment as both parties looked astounded by this development. He felt his heart pounding in his ears as the blood rushed to his face. Stan was still standing slack-jawed when the mermaid seemed to gather his wits about him. He flushed a violent shade of tinted fuschia and reeled back with bashful alarm. 

“Oh-my-god-I'm _-so-_ sorry, I didn't mean to- I’m sorry, my idiot friend Kenny- Kenny! Kenny get back here you asshole!" the mermaid rapidly babbled, spluttering out repeated apologies rising in fervour as his word vomit crescendoed in an embarrassed shriek.

"W-wha, you-" Stan intelligently said, dumbfounded. 

The mermaid pedaled himself back, splashing in the water as a new voice sniggered at the verbal assault. This all failed to register in Stan’s mind as his brain kept getting error messages replaying the last minute in his head.

Stan could only stand there weak-kneed, feeling the overwhelming need to sit down and turn off as his brain finally seemed to stop short-circuiting to catch up with the events unfolding around him. He had been kissed. _By a mermaid_. The undeniably attractive mermaid, Stan noticed, ears simmering slightly. The sculpted face of the mermaid looked even more delicate and elven up close, with the narrow nose and high cheekbones lightly dusted with red as the mermaid babbled away apologies for the unexpected lip-lock. 

Stan shook off his dumbstruck stupor when his brain finally registered the mermaid had in fact stopped apologising to him and was yelling shrilly at the still laughing form of someone else in the water. There was in fact another mermaid. This one had dirty blonde hair, and was cackling maniacally as he deftly dodged Kyle's swipes at him with a majestic russet and sandy coloured tail. There were mermaids, _plural_ , fighting around his boat. And Stan was still just kissed by a mermaid. Stan still needed to sit down for a moment.

"God, I could not stand your fucking _pining,_ " the blonde mermaid said, swimming underneath the boat and pulling himself behind Stan like they were best friends, putting him squarely between the two mermaids as they churned the water circling his boat like particularly social sharks. The water splashed violently as the red-headed mermaid angrily tried to reach for the other to no avail. 

"I was all like, ‘ _you should just kiss your man-crush already Kyle_ .’ But _no,_ you had to go all _weepy-eyed_ and listen _longingly_ to this guy singing nonsense on his music-maker and sit in the water like it a maiden at war whose husband was a million fucking miles away, when your man-crush was right fucking there." The blonde mermaid rolled his eyes. "And then, you had to go and drag _me_ into it. _‘Come with me Kenny, there's humans in the area, we need to watch them to make sure they don't get too close to the colony Kenny.’_ ” The blonde mermaid, Kenny, rolled his eyes with exasperation.

“I should've known this was just Kyle not knowing what to do with his boner. Kid’s so sexually repressed.'' Kenny winked at Stan knowingly like he'd known him all his life, and a mermaid talking to a human was just an everyday occurrence between them. 

"He's never _this_ passionate about scout duty you know, but he does this job like he treats his grades with all this _effort,_ like scout duty can even score you a grade.” Kenny dodged another swift strike from Kyle, switching sides so he was leaning on Stan’s left instead of his right. “But this time all he did was fucking _stare_ , waxing poetics about your voice and your eyes. What the fuck even is a ‘hybrid car’ two legs?" Stan could hear the air quotation marks, even as his tongue tied itself, adjusting to the fact there was a blonde _mermaid_ talking to him, while he shook his head at his red-haired companion. 

Stan was about to reply when the redheaded mermaid backed up from the boat suddenly, muscles coiled tightly, before Kyle launched forward and took a fucking flying leap out of the water, clearing Stan’s little rowboat cleanly and landing directly on top of the blonde mermaid, nary a hair out of place on Stan’s head as Kyle’s bodily tackle landed with a mighty splash. 

"You're a fucking _asshole_ Kenny, I’m gonna kill you! You don’t just push your friends on top of random people to get them t-to-to _kiss_ , that's a fucking asshole thing to do!" 

Kenny chortled as he wrestled with the redhead, keeping him at arm’s reach and dancing away while Kyle clawed at his tail. Literally clawed, upon inspection Stan noticed the boy’s fingers were tipped in sharp looking short, dark red claws. The skin on Kenny's tail seemed too thick and smooth for the claws to find any purchase on though, and they only left faint white marks in their wake which faded away quickly even as Stan watched.

"Well I don't see tall, dark and handsome here complaining, do you?" Kenny teased, as Kyle still thrashed like a wild cat to get to Kenny’s smug face.

“And I mean. He was pulling out a camera Kyle, what was I supposed to do? And you know the town code when it comes to cameras. No pictures whatsoever. Absolute secrecy, even for your boy toy’s pretty mug, or you compromise our integral secrets and all that old tribal bullshit.” 

Kenny held a hand to his lips in a stage whisper to Stan. “Though I can’t blame you for wanting to snap a pic, kid’s gorgeous and Nicole will not shut up about his flukes, I mean have you seen a rump hotter than my man Kyle here?”

“I-I uh,” Stan did not know what to say, he was still processing the sentence that mermaids even _had_ ‘rumps’.

“And like, there was no way we were going to pull away fast enough before you caught a pic, and if you got a clear shot of Kyle here, by mermaid code we’d be honour bound to kill you. So I thought to myself _'I can’t do that to Kyle’s man crush, so hey, I have an idea for the_ perfect _distraction_ '. " 

Kyle screamed indignantly as Kenny swam out of his grasp yet again. 

“Kenny you’re a fucking asshole get back here!”

Kenny chortled. "Geez Kyle, if you're that afraid I'm gonna judge you, don't worry your pretty little head about it. I don't give a fuck if you got the hots for a bloodthirsty human.” Kenny grabbed Kyle’s hands away from his hair where Kyle was trying to scrabble for his face, noticeably taking care to miss scratching Kenny’s eyes however. “Hell go fuck a porpoise if you want, see if I care, I won’t judge. I’d fuck a porpoise. Your dad would fuck a porpoise. Actually I reckon your ma's gotta be half porpoise don't you think so Kyle?"

Kyle glared at Kenny with pure murderous intent, and Stan felt genuine fear for Kenny’s life as he saw Kyle suddenly dive backwards, his tail trailed behind before lifting his great tail above the surface. Stan only had a moment to marvel at it. It was twice the length of the boy at least, most likely longer, the fluke was half the size of the rowboat itself, the colour muted in the limited light as water cascaded down the length in mesmerizing, sparkling waterfalls, before the great limb smacked down hard right on top of Kenny just as he said "Oh fuck" with all its might. Kenny tried to dive out of the way, but Kenny was much too slow to avoid the massive tail as it bashed into him. The impact was loud with a crashing smack! Stan winced in sympathy for Kenny as Kyle resurfaced with a victorious smirk on his face. The force of the smack was enough to cause a slight swell, it rocked Stan's boat as Kyle now easily wrestled a thoroughly stunned Kenny into submission, the latter too immobile to do much more than babble incoherently.

"Jesus fucking Christ Kyle you could have snapped my neck," Kenny said as soon as he was able to string more than two words together. 

"And you'd fucking deserve it too with the stunt you just pulled," Kyle snipped. For the first time since the accidental kiss, the redhead looked at Stan for a moment, before he flushed lightly. He looked away, dragging his stupefied friend with him further into the water away from the rowboat 

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened. My friend is an idiot. We're not supposed to talk to humans, let alone…" he gestured vaguely between them, flushing a brighter red. "This whole _situation._ We won't bother you again so long as you don't come looking for us. Just leave us alone alright? We’re perfectly happy being undiscovered while you people fuck up the planet. If you come after us, we’ll be forced to leave or try to kill you or whatever, whichever is easier. So, don’t do that. I'll be seeing you. Or won't, I mean." he bobbed up and down, his tail lashed back and forth in a way that reminded Stan of a nervous kid hopping from foot to foot while Kenny seemed to gather his wits somewhat. 

"Bye." Kyle finished surprisingly curtly.

The two swam out further from the rowboat, but still visible on the surface as Kenny caught Stan’s eyes looking back. He winked back at Stan following up with a crude miming sequence, pointing at Stan, miming sucking a dick and pointing at a retreating Kyle, before giving Stan a double thumbs up.

Stan flushed as he got the message loud and clear, he wasn’t sure what to do with himself and could only stand there dumbfounded as the pair submerged below the surface when they had reached a fair distance from his boat, and the last images of them dissolved into the blue depths. 

He lifted his fingertips to his mouth. His lips still tingled where the mermaid had laid one on him. From what the redhead, Kyle had said, it was an accident sure, the result of his strange friend Kenny’s interference, but Stan was pretty sure it had been downright magical. He kissed a mermaid. This was the part in the story where the mermaid grew legs and pronounced himself Stan’s Prince Charming isn't it? Shaking the fairy tale from his head, Stan only looked out at the spot where the duo had long ago faded from. His legs finally gave out from under him, exhausted from all the excitement as he sat down, hands trembling from where they lay on his lap wrapped around his camera.

He then looked down at the dark camera display, long dimmed from inactivity. It was slightly wet, splashed on from all the commotion. 

"Holy fuck." Stan breathed out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ey look I drew Kenny too. Kyle's design will be in a picture in the next chapter.


	7. Gadgets and Filters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They could talk into the night about memory cards and phone filters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just shouldn't make promises about update schedules, apologies about delays sometimes I just struggle to get into an artsy mood. I know I don't need to illustrate every chapter, but there's just some moments I feel like can't be left in my head. Anyway here it is in all its wordy glory. Feel free to leave comments and feedback, even if its just pointing out my atrocious typos.

Stan was taking it well, he really was. He didn’t break down immediately after boarding the deck. He didn’t crack in front of Wendy or Butters when they welcomed him back on board the ship, offering him the lead vocal in their last sea shanty of the night. He didn’t crack in front of Craig when he sarcastically asked how his emo poetry session went. He didn’t even snap at Cartman when he told him off for treading water all over the deck that Butters now had to mop up. He was taking it really well. He was only going through a fresh flask of his smuggled Russian vodka straight from the bottle. 

Stan hiccupped into his flask, smacking his lips as he attempted to wipe the blur from his eyes as he looked back at the new sketch he was working on. He was currently hunched over his desk, notebook open, with a pencil in his right hand while the left rebalanced the sweating flask of Russian vodka as it threatened to tip over and ruin his hastily scribbled sketches and notes. It was pretty messy. As a biologist, it wasn’t imperative Stan’s sketches were particularly artistic, the only requirements were that the images be an accurate documentation of his observations.

And what an observation Stan made that evening. Stan’s notebook was now littered with a litany of sketches over sketches of his vague recollections of that evening. He had sketches of the boy’s hands, the way his long fingers tapered into rugged claws, dark red like dried blood. There was a sketch for multiple angles of the boy’s tail, with a bunch of notes scribbled into the margins comparing it to existing and possibly related marine species, notes about guesstimated biometric data such as lengths and widths based on educated guesses from a lifetime of studying whale conservation. Moreover, there were numerous sketches of the kid’s face. On one page alone there was a three quarter view study especially showing off the delicate features of his high cheekbones and dainty nose. The lines on the next sketch, a front study of the boy’s face, focusing particularly on the wild array of hair, had particularly wonky lines as Stan’s hand-eye coordination started going slantways the more inebriated he got. The tail pattern Stan couldn’t quite nail down. He only saw it for a brief moment, and the pictures he did manage to take were at much too bad an angle and unfocused for reference. Stan took another swallow from the flask as he once again examined the dimly lit display on the camera preview, as if it held the answers to the universe.

The picture he had it on wasn’t very good. In fact, it was downright awful. The display showed a grainy, indiscernible, out of focus blurry picture of grey and mottled orange with the barest hint of those luminous green eyes as the merman had rushed up to meet him. Nothing concrete, it could've been a picture of someone's poorly mopped floor for all anyone could tell. But Stan could make out a pinkish smudge which could be interpreted as the start of a plane of the stomach of the mermaid as it had risen up to meet him. He thinks he can make out Kenny’s fingers too, thrusting Kyle's torso above the water, supporting him just behind what Stan guessed was Kyle's dorsal fin. Scowling at the picture, Stan considered for a moment. He could still show the picture to Wendy. While nothing in it was concrete, she at least would believe him if he told her what the photo was of. She would trust his judgement and semi-solid proof. The university also understandably trusted Wendy’s judgement a lot more than Stans, they’d listen to Wendy and they could probably fund an expedition to officially discover the mermaids.

But the more Stan thought about it, the more he realised that this was probably a terrible idea. Stan’s seen this movie under a billion different skins before. The white man exploits the natives in pursuit of exploiting a secret civilisation, it happened in fiction all the time from Pocahontas, to Atlantis, to Avatar. That was never going to fly with Wendy, not to mention Stan had no budding desire to become the antagonist of a second rate, knock-off, B-rated James Cameron movie. Afterall the mermaids had looked very defensive when Stan went to take that photo, not to mention they had also directly threatened his life. Maybe he shouldn’t tell Wendy after all. The picture painted Stan as the bad guy, he realised. If he met the mermaids again, they’d never trust him again after pulling a stunt like that. He’d have to … to show a demonstration or something, make a show of trust. He’d have to re-establish himself in their eyes, as someone who their secret would be safe with. They had both seemed pretty friendly from what Stan had seen, especially considering that Kenny individual had a … unique sense of easy-going friendship. Stan was fairly confident they’d meet him again if he sought them out. Of course, the first thing he’d have to do is apologise, perhaps bring proof of his commitment to keeping their existence a secret. Mind resolute, Stan brought up the collection of pictures on the camera display again, and promptly deleted them all. He took out the memory card of the camera for good measure and crushed it beneath his boot.

Just then, Butters knocked on the door frame. “Whatcha up to Stan?” he asked.

Stan started, quickly stepping away from the splintered remains and attempting to scrape away the evidence with his boot. Stan gave an exaggerated drunken sigh, in hopes of taking attention away from his foot. "Nothing much Butters, just had an exciting day out on the water s’all”

Butters looked down at the scuffed remains of the memory card. “Exciting day? Then why are you crushing that memory card Stan? Wendy won’t like you breaking the equipment.”

Reeling for a suitable answer, Stan tapped his foot against the grain of the wood to dust off the shrapnel from the grooves of the boot. “Oh I’m sure she wouldn’t mind, it was broken anyway and it pissed me off, so I stepped on it.”

“Really?” Butters tilted his head with confusion.

Stan nodded emphatically “Mmmhmm,” he affirmed, like the memory card had personally offended Stan by its flawed ‘broken’ existence. “Yeah, Wendy won’t miss it.”

Butters seemed to accept this answer. “Well alright Stan, good riddance to broken tech eh?”

Stan let out a sigh of relief as the lie was bought and paid for. “Yeah, damn memory cards amiright?” He gave a nervous laugh and set the camera back on his desk for good measure.

Taking care not to fall over himself, Stan invited Butters in. He cheerfully stepped inside and surveyed Stan’s room, nodding to the little collection of memory card bits. “Do you want me to help ya clean that up Stan?”

Stan shook his head and crouched down to the ground, already fetching a small dustpan. “No thanks I got it.” He swept the crumbled remains into the pan and collected them into his jean pocket. Can’t have Butters throwing his physical declaration of mermaid secrecy out with the dust bunnies after all.

Butters then bobbed on his heels excitedly. “Ooh by the way, did you finish writing a neat song like you said you would?”

Stan blinked before his befuddled brain waded through his alcoholic fugue and caught up with the fib he had told Butters earlier in the night. “Oh! Oh right, no not yet. I was just practicin’ some old songs I made up when we were kids,” he slurred. Stan gestured to the desk chair, inviting Butters to take a seat. Taking his offer, Butters eagerly spun the rickety metal frame chair around, sitting on it back to front so that his arms rested on the back of the chair and his legs dangled either side.

“Oh yeah? Like that song you made about bullying back in elementary?” Butters asked, faltering. He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “That sure was pretty catchy I guess.”

“Yeah exactly, like that.” Stan replied, happy that Butters seemed content to almost tell Stan’s lies for him. Sometimes Butters assumed the best of everyone, it’s how he was manipulated by Cartman so easily. Stan wished he had Butter’s optimism, but he definitely wouldn’t want his naivete that came with it. He wasn’t a total idiot though, Butters sometimes had a chaotic persona he’d slip into while they were kids, Stan often wondered where Butters went with that after high school. “Though, it got a little surreal after a while when I started singing about hybrid cars.”

“Oh I remember that song,” He piped up. “That was one of my favourites, it’s so inspirational. I think you did the world a lot of good telling people we should all be more environmentally conscious!” Butters said happily. 

Stan snorted and turned to his bed, sitting down on the covers heavily. “Yeah I was like, nine back then dude, I don’t think a nine-year-old is all that inspiring.” He groaned into his hands as the beginnings of a headache started throbbing behind his eyes.

Butters frowned, kicking at the base of Stan’s bed. “Being on a boat seems to be a bad influence on ya though Stan, you smell like you’ve been drinking something fierce. I don’t think you should be going out if it’s stressing you out or something.”

Stan smiled slowly and pointed at the side of his head. “Now how would I make a good marine biologist if I can’t even go out on the water Butters? I’ll be fine, I just had a bit of a pick me up don’t worry about it.”

“Oh okay then, if you say so.” Butters let the matter go. Then, something caught his eye and Butters hopped up, spinning the chair back to face the side of Stan’s desk sending papers fluttering. 

“Oh, you’ve been drawing? Whatcha working on in your notebook Stan?”

He grit his teeth. Stan didn’t want to show him, not really, but he felt bad for lying to Butters’ face the past few days, this was probably one of the smaller truths he’d be comfortable with Butters knowing. 

Stan got up from the bed and leaned on his desk, turning to the appropriate pages. “Um, I was talking about some stuff with Wendy and it turned into drawing some, um-”

“Ooh! Mermaids!” Butters said excitedly, recognising the telltale human fish hybrid drawings. He was practically clapping with excitement as his fingers carefully traced the image on the pages.

“I love mermaids, they’re so pretty and magical. I like Ariel, she wasn’t my favourite Disney princess, I always kinda liked Cinderella myself. She had a sweet rack. Wait, you’re not gonna give your mermaid hot tits?”

“What?!” Stan yelped, scandalized. Unfortunately this was also a side of Butters that resurfaced every now and again, a weirdly innocent-yet-not raunchy side of him that was fostered by Eric back when they were kids and he egged him on to do ‘pull a Hot Cosby’ on Butters’ last Canadian girlfriend. 

“Hot tit-? No! Dude, this one’s a guy! Why’re you saying that?”

Butters seemed to pout in disappointment. “Aw biscuits, cause Eric told me the only girls out at sea are sea wenches and big tittied mermaids. S’kinda why I wanted to come on this trip you know, see myself maybe get a big tittied girlfriend. I didn’t know there were guy mermaids! Does that make ‘em mermen? Do you think the mermen get to bang the big tittied mermaids?”

Stan was somewhat flabbergasted by the turn in conversation. Someone really needed to be there to stop Butters picking up Eric’s ideologies all the time, but this time that person wasn’t Stan. He was too drunk for this shit right now to set Butters straight from Eric’s sexist commentaries. He needed to be somewhere else. Right now.

“You know what Butters, all this talk about mermaids has made me want to go and play some more music on the rowboat again, I’ll see you later. And maybe you should talk to Wendy about what Cartman said about mermaids ok? I’m sure she’d love to set you straight.” Excusing himself, Stan made a quick escape and weaved his way back towards the rowboats.

Good grief, sometimes Stan wasn’t sure if Butters knew what he was talking about, and other times Butters would know exactly what he was talking about, even if it was misguided. Stan blamed the lack of proper bringing up, but then again the same could be said of all the kids in South Park if Stan were being really honest.

* * *

Back on the deck, Stan fumbled with the rope with his shaky fingers, which were slow to respond from his drunken hand eye coordination. It probably wasn’t the brightest idea to escape from Butters by going out on a rowboat while inebriated, so Stan decided to put on a lifejacket. ‘ _There,’_ he grinned to himself smartly. He took precautions. As Stan pushed the moored rowboat away from the deck, the little rowboat began to drift away from the S.S Casa Bonita when Stan’s alcohol infused brain realised his vital mistake. The last few times he had gotten the mermaids to show up he was playing music, but In his haste to get away from Butters, he had forgotten to take his guitar with him.

“Shit” he muttered to himself. Well now, how was he going to attract the mermaids to his little impromptu outing? Now that he was actually out here, Stan wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. It wasn’t like he had actually planned on attempting to meet the mermaids again quite so soon, especially given their not so subtle death threat. He wasn't even sure what he was going to say to them even if they did show up beyond an awkward “sorry.”

‘ _Hello merpeople, I know I’m not exactly your favourite human right now for attempting to exploit you by taking a photo when we met earlier, but I deleted it and we’re good now right?’_ yeah ‘cause that would fly over well with them, Stan thought to himself.

Stan didn’t feel much like going back to the S.S Bonita for his guitar and potentially running into Wendy while shitfaced drunk, he’d never hear the end of it for sneaking alcohol onboard, so he took out a drink from his jacket pocket, unscrewed the cap and decided to stall his return by taking a swig of liquid courage from the flask. _Maybe_ , he thought, as he wiped away the dregs of vodka from his lips, _maybe he could chance it and simply call empty-handed into the deep dark blue and someone finned would show up._

“Uh, heyyyyyyy. Hello out there? Mermaids? Mer… merguys? It’s me, the dumbass who y’met earlier today? I know I didn’t say it at th’ time, but my name’s Staaan.” Stan felt profoundly stupid mumbling drunkenly to the empty ocean, but if the mermaids were scouts, then they could be within listening distance, right? Right. No, he didn’t sound like his father on a Friday night thank you very much, what are you talking about?

“K-um. Karl, no Kyle right? Kyle? Or Kinsey I think it was? Kenneth? Are you out there?”

Stan peered out, squinting. The warm lights from the S.S Casa Bonita and the pale light of the waning moon were barely illuminating the water around him, when he heard a quiet splash and quickly turned around. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, before he nearly jumped when he found that lurking just beneath the boat was that familiar pair of glowing green eyes of the elusive redhead. Stan’s breath caught in his chest as his fingers tightened their grasp on his silver flask. From his view, Stan couldn’t see far into the water from the lack of lighting, but he could see that the merman’s tail swept gracefully out from beneath his torso fading into the darker depths of the ocean. In the dark of the night, the reddish hues looked inky black in the water, blending in well with the distortion of the ocean. The dark cloud of slowly sifting hair shifted over his snarling face. Their eyes met. Though his disposition was one of aggression, a curious expression was riddled in Kyle’s eyes. His eyes which were framed in unfairly long, almost girlish lashes, Stan noted. He looked more intrigued than he looked aggressive, and it was showing in the way the mermaid struggled to keep his teeth bared in his threatening display. He wasn’t going to hurt Stan. The mermaid was curious, but did not dare to breach the barrier between air and sea. He was close enough Stan could almost touch him if he just leaned over.

“Hey-” When Stan made to lean over the boat, Kyle flinched and started to retreat further into the water.

“Wait- no I just want to apologise!” Panicked, Stan got up and desperately tried to reach into the water, stop the mermaid from leaving. However he got up too quickly for his alcohol addled mind as the motion caused his vision to tip, and the world spun on its axis as he over-shot his reach and started to fall off the boat. A greyish hand shot from the water and steadied his shoulder, the other hand gripped his hair through the ratty knit of his poofball hat and roughly threw him in a heap back onto the bench of his boat.

“Are all humans as crazy and clumsy as you are, or are you simply dysfunctional?” an irritated voice cracked through the air.

Stan looked up, stunned. The redhead had actually pulled his torso up next to the side of the boat when he had steadied Stan’s clumsy drunk ass. He spat out water from his mouth as even more water dripped in flowing rivulets over his skin, accentuating the lithe form sprawled on the side of Stan’s boat. He looked surreal under the dim glow of the pearlescent moon, catching Stan’s eyes with his own luminous ones. The water thickened his lashes, framing his eyes and making them appear more sharp and dark as they glared at Stan’s sheer incompetence. Kyle’s wet hair draped over his face in dark tresses that made a stark contrast with his pale skin. It was already starting to curl up in the stiff nighttime breeze that swiftly reminded Stan that it was freezing out as the newly damp parts of his attire bit at his warmth. His teeth chattered as he huddled closer to himself bracing against the wind. He felt a slight tug when he pulled his arm in. They both looked surprised at the offending limb, the mermaid belatedly realising he had yet to let go of Stan’s arm. He quickly relinquished his hold on Stan’s arm and tucked the claws under his other arm, as if to stop the limb from further misbehaviour.

“Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation dumbass? If I wasn’t here you could have died. Don’t you know humans can freeze up when they get too cold in the water? Who’d even see you from your main boat? No one would be able to rescue you, it’s the dead of the night!” 

Stan could only shrug through the alcoholic fog as Kyle scowled at his dopey expression. "Heyyyy, you came, it’s really you!” Stan clapped a hand on the mermaid's back in camaraderie, causing him to stiffen under the touch even as Stan laughed to himself. “OK look, maaaybe falling in the water wasn’t one of my smoothes' moments, but it got you to talk to me again din’t it?” he slurred.

The merman could only flounder under Stan’s brazen remark, the fins on the sides of his head lighting up a fierce shade of red as he did so. At least, Stan thinks it was flushing. It was a bit too dark to really tell and he wasn’t in the best frame of mind to be making observations of details like that. 

“Shut up, shut up. I’m not talking to you, I’m not.” The mermaid denied. He made to push himself away from the boat. But Stan hadn't had a chance to say what he really needed to yet! Heart pounding in his ears with panic, Stan's hand shot out and grabbed without thinking. 

"Wait, I'm sorry!"

The water sloshed as the mermaid's tail whipped violently back and forth. Kyle yanked hard at his newly imprisoned arm, but Stan didn’t let go, he couldn't risk letting him leave until he apologised. 

"Let. Go." Kyle snarled. His eyes flashed dangerously, and for the first time Stan felt a flash of fear, his stomach dropping. He felt the muscles encircled by his hand flex threateningly, showing the ease with which they could throw him off. Stan realised the redhead was deliberately holding back, giving him one last chance to voluntarily let go or Stan would risk being dragged into the water. Kyle could not doubt easily flip this boat over right now with his tail and let Stan drown or die of hypothermia. 

Stan struggled to string his words together while he had Kyle as his audience. The alcohol saturating his brain, while it gave him the courage, or rather stupidity to see the mermaid again in the dead of the night, wouldn’t help in him officially apologise. He made a valiant effort to literally shake off the fugue that was turning his brain to mush. He could babble like an idiot later, right now he had to pull his shit together and set things straight before he lost the mermaid’s good will for good. 

"You haven't let me apologise properly yet." Stan said slowly and carefully, making sure the words that came out were clear and full of sincere intent. He couldn't screw this up. He hesitated, and risked loosening his fingers slightly. To his relief, the mermaid didn't immediately bolt. Instead, he pulled his arm back and clung to the side of the boat, hanging off the edge buoyed by his massive tail with a perplexed expression on his face. 

"Apologise? Wait, _you’re_ the one who’s sorry? _I_ should be the one who’s sorry, I’m the one who- _kissed_ you. I mean it was an accident, but you didn’t ask for a stranger to kiss you." Kyle finished that last bit looking down on himself and avoiding looking directly into Stan's eyes. He even fidgeted with his claws, embarrassed.

"Not about that!” Stan insisted, his emotions running high from the nagging, niggling need at the back of his mind telling him he had to tell the mermaid what he meant no matter what. “I’m not sorry for _that_ , and um, you don’t have to be either.” Stan mumbled, flushing at the memory. 

“But I mean about that picture I took this af’ernoon. The camera.” He hung his head in shame, and would have prostrated himself to Kyle’s mercy if he remembered at this moment what a prostrated position looked like. “It was a real dick move of me. You guys clearly don't want to be discovered and I totally like, tried to exploit you guys for my own personal fame and glory. I don't wanna be that asshole who exposes you if your people want to remain in secret.” Stan looked up, and tried to fuel every bit of sincerity into the next few words. “I'll keep your existence a secret to the grave, I swear."

Stan hung his head and fished the shattered remains of the memory card from his pocket and held them out for Kyle to inspect. 

"Here, I ev’n crushed the memory card the pics were saved to.” said Stan. 

He fiddled with the remains as he continued to look at Kyle’s measured expression, trying to discern if his apology was getting through. “Now no one can ever recover information from it. It wasn't even a good pic. Not that you're not good looking, I mean i don't think you're good looking, I mean you do look good but not necessarily to me specifically. _I think you look fine_ . Fuck. _By which I mean I'm a shit photographer and the picture was blurry as hell and out of focus…_ I'll shut up now."

God Kyle must think he's such a fool right now, Stan screamed internally as his brain seemed to have given up attempting to communicate with any degree of sobriety and shifted squarely in the realm of awkward drunken teenage pussyfooting. This was not at all how he pictured his apology going, the whole operation was up in flames. Suddenly drowning didn't seem that bad of an option to Stan anymore. He'd give anything for the boat to spring to life and swallow him where he stood, sending him to an early grave. 

Stan felt the call of the flask inviting him to drink away the embarrassment that wouldn't leave his mind and fiddled with the cap on the flask when he risked a glance up. Stan widened his eyes, he was surprised to find that Kyle hadn't turned tail and run (swum?) post awkward _I-totally-don't-actually-think-you’re-ridiculously-attractive_ spiel Stan babbled just now. Geeze, Stan thought he got over his awkward tongue tied phase with Wendy in elementary. Evidently he had to jump through these hoops again when he talked to anyone he found attractive. What a hassle. Can't Stan skip the foreplay and just get rejected already? 

"Thanks…. I think? " said Kyle. He held his hand out for Stan to tip the proffered remains of the memory chip into as he peered at the pieces with fascination. Stan thinks he saw Kyle bite away a smile. He was only thankful that the night was too dark for Kyle to properly see the colour of his flaming face right now. Oh god, what if mermaids had night vision?

"I didn't tell ‘nyone about you," Stan continued in a mumble. "It just didn't feel right, not even m’friend Wendy knows."

Kyle nodded." I know, Kenny and I have been watching. Kenny thought you were too shocked to tell anyone, proof or no."

Stan blinked as the familiar name brought up the image of the carefree blonde who'd just casually brought up the topic of murdering Stan the last time they'd met. "Wow, Kenny didn’t think I’d tell? But we’d only just met, why’d he trust me so much?"

Kyle made an unimpressed face. 

"Well kind of, not exactly.” Kyle pinched the bridge of his nose with the familiar tired annoyance only one with a sometimes obnoxious friend could do when they’ve embarrassed themselves too many times. “What he really said, was that he _‘bet you were having too much of a big gay panic to tell anyone.'_ "

Stan winced and tried not to give away how Stan _did_ kind of have a gay panic. It wasn't just gay, it was also freaking out that _mermaids were fucking real_ but there was also gay panic mixed in there. While drawing in his notebook, Stan had found himself spending more time than usual trying to recall correctly the exact shades of green in Kyle’s eyes than he did the average consideration he put into drawing pondweed. When he realised he had been thinking for thirty minutes yet to commit to a colour, and he had started thinking about the way the boy’s skin had felt pleasantly cool on his own, and wondered how it would have felt to have those lips undulating against his own under better circumstances, had Stan realised he might’ve had a slight crush. Back in high school he never really thought to label himself as bi, but it wasn't like he didn't notice that he wasn't exactly the straightest pin in the cushion. He just didn't think about it long enough to freak out about at the time. Tonight, he had nothing to do in his room _but_ freak out. Before Stan knew what came over him, all the evidence that Stan needed that he was crushing and crushing _hard_ was now doodled in the pages his stupid notebook in an in-depth sketch study. Sometimes his affinity for the arts betrayed him. He didn’t think he drew Wendy’s face half a dozen times till at least he’d known her a week. This had been what, less than a day?

"So how'd you know my friend’s name is actually Kenneth?" Kyle asked, interrupting Stan’s train of thoughts.

Stan snapped out of his minor follow up gay panic and whipped his head up at the question. "Huh?" 

"I know for a fact I never call Kenny by his full name, and certainly not this afternoon. How'd you know his name was actually Kenneth?"

 _It was?_ Stan shrugged. "I hones’ly didn’t. Just a lucky guess I s’pose.” He grinned and looked back at Kyle. “I figured Kenny was a nickname so I just tried a bunch of Kenn names. M’next guess would’ve been Kennedy."

Kyle made a ‘Hmm’ accepting this explanation, his sharp canines peeking as he ground his teeth together. Stan’s eyes couldn’t help but flick to the movement. Kyle’s teeth glinted a sharklike white. Stan frowned. He’d much prefer Kyle to be smiling, he thinks Kyle would look nice without a scowl on his face. The last couple times he’d been bashful, embarrassed, smug that one time he nailed Kenny with his tail assault, and irritated. Kyle had such delicate features, Stan reckons they’d look hypnotic if he could see him actually happy.

Suddenly, Stan felt emboldened by the alcohol steeped in his brain and he felt a rush of disappointment that he had yet to actually introduce himself. This wasn’t fair, Stan knew Kyle’s name but he didn’t know Stan’s. It was time to rectify that. Stan moved to the side of the boat Kyle was still clinging on to and tried not to be affronted when Kyle understandably leaned away, cautious of the new developing situation. Stan made a ‘come hither’ motion with his hand for Kyle to come closer. Kyle looked confused at Stan’s spontaneous behaviour, but obliged and settled back to the side of the boat. “I just realised, I never told you my name.” Stan said. “Don’t you wanna know my name?”

Kyle relaxed at the mundane change of topic. “Sure, if it pleases you.” he said, rolling his eyes.

Stan smiled dopily and held out his hand. "I'm Stan Marshley, marine biologist in the making." He then frowned, wait, that didn’t sound right did it?

“I mean I’m Stan Marshwalker. Fuck, Stanley Marshwalker. I mean. No my name’s not ‘fuck.’ I’m Stan Marsh.” Stan finally managed to get out. He grinned, proud of himself. Stan then started laughing like it was the most hilarious thing in the world. “I’m Stan Marsh and I’m gonna be a marine biologist!” he shouted, uncaring if someone heard him from the deck of the S.S Casa Bonita. Stan didn’t know why he was laughing so much, what he said wasn’t that funny. In fact, it sounded more like he was five listing what he wanted to be when he was grown up. God, he was so lame. 

Kyle stared at the extended hand, frowning at Stan’s display of carefree laughter while mystified by the hand gesture, but recognising it was some sort of greeting.

"Hi _‘Stan’_ ,” He started cautiously, air quotes implied. “I guess we’ll make this official. My name’s Kyle.” 

“I already know _that_.” Stan whined, rolling his eyes. “Kenny only said it a million times when he was here. Won’t you tell me your last name?”

Kyle cocked his eyebrow. “We don’t usually use last names unless we know the other person rather well, but since you gave me yours I guess I may as well give you mine. It’s Broflovski.” 

_Bro-flov-ski,_ Stan silently mouthed out the word on his tongue, enunciating the syllables and playing with the strange sounds. _Huh_ , Stan thought. _Weird name, it sounded almost Polish._

Kyle awkwardly held out the same hand that Stan had extended, mirroring the human gesture to the best of his ability like he had with the wave yesterday. Stan smiled at the cluelessness and corrected the greeting by reaching out with his opposite hand instead, grasping warmly and shaking Kyle’s hand.

“This is a handshake.” Stan explained, laughing. “It’s one’a the ways we say hello. Don’t mermaids shake hands underwater?”

Kyle’s hand was almost frigid in his own. It warmed up slightly in Stan’s hold, damp and unsure. The claws left slight depressions on the back of Stan’s hands, the muscles felt sinewy and worn.

“No, we don’t.” Kyle answered. He continued staring at his hand in bewilderment even as Stan let go of it. “That’s a human thing. Mermish greet one another this way. Look.”

Kyle took back his hand and looked directly at Stan, getting his attention. Stan’s vision blurred in and out of focus as he tried to settle enough to stop seeing double. When the world seemed to stop looking like he was watching it from underwater, and Kyle had his full attention, Stan felt his eyes widen and his breath quicken as the fins on the sides of Kyle’s face where ears would normally be, flicked up and down in rapid succession. 

“This is how you’d say hello to a friend.” Kyle explained, repeating the gesture. “It’s not like we can just stop and chat underwater.”

At a later, more sober date would Stan ever admit to himself the gesture was undeniably adorable, it looked to him like Kyle was like a puppy whose ears couldn’t stop jumping because it was so excited to meet you. Unfortunately, this gesture must also be easier to do underwater, because a result of this was that stray droplets clinging to the tips of the ear-fins sprayed into the air, missing Stan by only a few scant inches. In other words, it was cute as hell, and Stan soon found himself unable to reconcile himself with that fact. 

_'Oh god,'_ Stan thought to himself before he felt the telltale lurch in his stomach. His stomach was doing flips in his body right now and it was all Stan could do to look away over the edge of the boat Kyle wasn't leaning against before Stan projectile vomited his dinner into the ocean. 

“Oh, dude sick!” Kyle whined.

Stan wiped the corner of his mouth sheepishly with his sleeve. "Sorry, I puke when I get nervous." Stan admitted. “I have an easily upset stomach." 

“What?” Kyle asked, “What do you mean?”

Stan struggled for words. “You ever get the feeling where you’re so nervous it’s like your stomach is tying itself in knots and anything could set it off?”

Kyle looked confused. “No? What, like being seasick?”

Grimacing, Stan envied all his peers who seemed to do so well with talking to people they fancied. Craig didn’t count Stan was convinced he was dead inside. But like Heidi never had issues talking to Eric when they were together, and Eric was a psychopath so he didn’t count either, but even fucking Butters seemed to be able to pull his shit together around Trisha when that was a thing. “Sure, let’s go with that.” said Stan, reluctant to elaborate to Kyle about his unfortunate habit. “Don’t- don’t go doing that, what you just did anymore. It’s-” _Stupidly cute._ “-Gross. You’re getting water everywhere.”

Kyle snorted, smug. “What? You not like getting wet? Well, I’m afraid its a bit late for that. It’s just seawater, don’t be such a baby.”

He started flicking his ear-fins again, this time purposefully attempting to aim the droplets at Stan.

“Dude stop!” Stan cried, quickly looking away to hide his blush with a laugh as he pushed Kyle off the side of the boat the way he’d have shoved Craig off the lunch table for teasing him. Stan froze, what had he just done? He just pushed a mermaid off the side of his boat! Fuck, he wished he were sober enough to not fuck this up royally right now. 

But he needn’t have worried. Kyle merely landed back in the water with a slight splash and came back up chortling, shaking his head to clear his eyes of his hair. Thankfully this time without malicious intent to get Stan wet.

“You’re such a child, the water’s not going to hurt you.” Kyle stifled his laughter behind his hands, effortlessly treading the water. He tried to tame his hair a little, pulling some of it out of his eyes. Stan scowled and tried not to think about fixing Kyle’s hair for him. It was already attempting to re-curl awkwardly at the top of Kyle’s head messily, sticking up in all sorts of adorable ways.

“I may be childish, but at least I’m not a fish.” 

Stan grimaced. His slur made it come out more as ”Az leas’ m’nodda fish.” He swirled his tongue a little in his mouth and frowned unhappily at the delayed response and almost rubbery like consistency he felt in his mouth. 

Kyle’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, I am not a fish! If anyone here is a fish it’s you! Every time I see you you’re like, on the brink of drowning.” he said affronted. 

“Hey, yoouu’re the one who’s like, you’ve literally got fins and a tail!” Stan replied lamely. He gestured at the features in question. Kyle reared back, indignant as his side fins tipped back and his nose flared. His eyes seemed to take on a new wild light as his mouth quirked up in a snarl.

“For your information, fish aren’t warm-blooded and last I checked my fins and tail are _entirely_ mammalian!” Kyle continued on. His voice took on a new tonality of outrage. “From what I’ve seen, _you_ have the IQ of a fish, coming out to sea in the middle of the night. You’re a fish. You’ve got fish for brains. You’re guppy grains!” he finished hotly.

Guppy, what? What did Kyle just say? Stan stared blankly and blinked a good three times. When he concluded it wasn’t a product of a drunken audio filter, and he had really heard what he thought he had heard he sat up, puzzled. “I’m sorry what? What’s guppy grains? The hell are you talking about?”

“It’s, um.” Kyle suddenly faltered. In the heat of the moment, he had actually pulled himself further up the side of Stan’s boat to meet him at eye level. Now he pulled back, bringing room for Jesus between them again, trying to back up and rewind. “It’s like, uh-”

Stan’s eyes narrowed as he once again noted the cadence of Kyle’s voice was changing. When he was getting more shrill, it had actually started sounding like some sort of accent. And now when he spoke more softly, it went back to ‘normal.’ 

“And why did you just sound like you could have walked off the Jersey Shore?” Stan asked shrewdly.

“What?”

“I didn’ notice it before, but you definitely sounded funny.” Stan continued, thinking it over and comparing the different speech patterns in his head before beaming brightly. “Wait do you actually have a Jersey accent?”

“The fuck is a Jersey accent?” Kyle asked indignantly, in an accent that was a hundred percent East coast. It wasn’t an exact replica of a New Jersey accent, but it was definitely from the same page, and it only seemed to get more prominent with Kyle’s heightened emotional state.

“Oh my god, you _doooo_ .” Stan giggled, prodding a finger at Kyle’s chest as the boy tried to bat him away. “You _totally_ sound like you’re from Jersey. It’s differen’, not as obnoxious, but _you_ definitely have a Jersey accent.” Stan frowned at himself as his tongue seemed to momentarily disagree with him. Damn, the drunken slur was definitely rearing its ugly head again. And just when Stan was making good conversation too.

“What’s wrong with the way I talk? This is how everyone in town talks.” Kyle said hotly. He pointed back at Stan, not impressed. “Like you’re one to criticize, you’re slurring all over the place. The fuck’s wrong with the way you’re talking? Me and Kenn’ve heard you before. You aren't normally this bad on the big ship.”

Stan unscrewed the cap on his near-empty flask of vodka and took a long swig before throwing his arms up in the air in the universal gesture for cluelessness. “Take a gander.”

Kyle frowned and pulled himself closer, hoisting himself higher up the side of the tiny boat once more for closer inspection. Kyle took the bottle from Stan’s hands, and curiously leaned in to sniff at his jacket, comparing the scent to the mouth of the flask. Stan stiffened at the close contact, but was too inebriated to tell Kyle off. Stan stumbled in an attempt to step back from the unexpected closeness and fell in a heap on the bench of the boat as Kyle continued observing him. His sea legs were clearly on vacation back on the deck of the S.S Casa Bonita.

Sloshing the contents of the flask, Kyle, at last, held the bottle back to Stan. “Dude this bottle smells sick, and you reek of it. What’s wrong with you?” Kyle asked, a flash of genuine concern reaching his verdant eyes. “You’re not sick are you?”

Stan laughed, appreciative of the worry lacing Kyle’s now less Jersey sounding softer voice. “Nope, but close.” he leaned in conspiratorially and cupped his hand over Kyle’s side fin in a stage whisper. “I’m just fucking wasted.” he giggled to himself uncontrollably. “Do you even have ears behind these things?” he flicked at one playfully with his fingers.

Kyle’s side fine twitched in response, swatting the offending hand away. “Of course I do you dolt. What do you mean wasted? What, like drunk?” Kyle asked, incredulous. “I thought ‘drunken sailor’ was only a stereotype, or do all humans turn stupid out on the water?”

Ignoring the obvious question, Stan leaned forward and pet Kyle’s head affectionately, like he would a small puppy. He was running his fingers through the wet hair, probably tangling it more than he was helping, but he couldn’t help himself. He was a friendly drunk.

Kyle however, was having none of it and pushed himself away from Stan. “Okay, you’re clearly going through some issues right now, how about I go now and you can get back to, whatever it is you land folk do when I’m not around, sound good?”

Nodding to himself, Kyle made to leave when Stan’s hand snaked out to grab at his left wrist.

Immediately, Stan knew he did the wrong thing when Kyle flinched and hissed through his teeth. _“Don’t.”_

Eyes widening, Stan quickly loosened his grip on Kyle’s wrist. Paying attention to it now, he noted the ropey, jagged texture of skin beneath his fingers. 

“You’re hurt?” Stan’s big sad eyes eyed the wound, which was red and irritated. The cut extended from the back of Kyle's hand and looped to the front of his wrist. It looked fresh, days old at most. 

Kyle pulled back his arm defensively and rolled his eyes. "That,” he started, “was my reward for saving you from brilliantly falling into the massive shipwreck last week.” he gingerly massaged the area. “Which, you're welcome for by the way." he added irritably.

Stan gasped. "I knew it, that _was_ you at the shipwreck!"

Kyle nodded, rolling his eyes. "Uh, yeah. And in your half-delirious state you thought I was attacking you or something and you fought back.”

Kyle mimed himself cutting away a rope. “Here I am trying to save a two legs idiot, and he thanks me by stabbing me in the wrist. Really felt the gratitude by the way, felt it the whole time I bled home and had to explain to my mum why I looked like I went two rounds with a shark."

“It’s not infected is it?” Stan asked, attempting to get a better look.

“No,” said Kyle, he twisted his arm further from Stan’s reach. “And it’s nothing. Really it’s just a scratch, nothing to worry about.”

“Fuck, I can’t believe I hurt you, I didn’t mean it you know.” Stan looked down with solemn regret. He then gave a half-hearted self-deprecating laugh. “I guess make a pretty shitty rescue victim huh?"

“Just a bit.” Kyle agreed, though his eyes softened so maybe it wasn’t all bad.

Stan somewhat floundered in the ensuing awkward silence. Kyle looked like he still wanted to leave, but one thing Stan knew was that he wasn’t ready for this encounter to end, he wanted to ask him something else.

“So, what’sa mermaid even doing out here?” he tried to ask casually. He leaned back and folded his arms behind his head, attempting to appear nonchalant. Stan’s poofball hat ended up falling off his head from the new angle.

Kyle cocked an eyebrow. “I live out here, me and Kenn are scouts, we were scouting the perimeter.” Kyle picked up the poofball hat from the floor of the boat. He looked at it curiously, experimenting with the stretch of the knit and texture of the woven fibers between his fingers before humming to himself and fixing it once more on Stan’s head.

Stan had the decency to look abashed at Kyle effectively mothering him. Stan looked away trying to play it off. “Oh, scouting? What for? I can’t see anything too interesting out this way I’ll be honest.”

Kyle shrugged, nonplussed by Stan’s questioning. “Checking for human activity, scouting out fish schools for our hunters to track, the usual. When we met I was out checking the shipwreck for human artifacts.”

Stan blinked. “Human artifacts?”

“Yeah,” Kyle nodded emphatically, and the first vestiges of a smile started at the corners of his lips. “You guys have all sorts of weird junk when ships sink. Like clothes, jewelry, those gadget rectangles.”

“Gadget rectangles?” Stan asked, confused.

“Yeah those um,” Kyle paused, searching for words. “Look we don’t always know what the words are for everything,” said Kyle, as he rubbed the back of his neck. “The extent of our human knowledge and language comes from observing tourists, not all of whom exactly speak English so um, I don’t know the real word for it, but almost all humans carry one.” Kyle struggled for a moment with his words. “It’s a … device of some kind? It seems to facilitate social communication and portable photography.”

The gears in Stan's head turned for a good moment while his alcohol-infused brain decoded the words Kyle was using.

“Oh! You mean like a cellphone?”

Kyle looked at Stan blankly. “A phone? No, I’ve seen phones on ships, the captain uses those to communicate with the other levels of large ships.”

Stan shook his head. “No those’re different, Those are like service phones. I mean a cellular phone. Like, like one of these?” Stan rummaged in his backpack for a moment. Kyle waited patiently while Stan pulled out lint and loose pens from the pockets before triumphantly pulling out his phone for Kyle to inspect. Kyle’s eyes sparkled. 

“That’s it!” he said excitedly pointing. “Those gadget rectangles.”

“Yeah, this is my cell phone.” Stan said. “It’s like a wireless phone. Well, it does quite a bit more than a phone.” Stan clarified “It’s more of a mini, portable computer nowadays.”

Kyle cocked his head. “A computer? Those things are computers?”

Now it was Stan’s turn to be puzzled. “Hang on how have you heard of a computer but you haven’t heard of a phone?”

Kyle shrugged, waving it off. “A lot of research boats just like yours come this way, and they all have these machines that scan and ping the area, the scientists say the phrase ‘analyse it on the computer’ a lot.”

“Anyway,” Stan decided to shelf the finer points of linguistics for another, more sober time. “You’ve scavenged phones then?”

Kyle nodded. “Oh yeah, all the time. Tourists drop them every now and again from those big holiday cruise liners. I even have a few of my own. So how do they work?” he asked curiously.

“I mean a lot of stuff on the ocean floor stops working properly, but not all the stuff. And fresh wreckage usually isn’t too broken up. So how come these phone things I find never work?” Kyle looked hungrily at Stan’s phone, eager to unravel it’s secrets.

“Oh, these things don’t work if they get wet inside.” Stan explained easily. “It ruins the components.”

“Components?” Kyle asked, the word foreign in his mouth. 

“You know components … It’s like the thingy that makes the um, the things work.” Stan said intelligently. Damn, he was a marine biologist, not an electronic engineer. And how do you explain circuits to someone who’s lived their whole life underwater?

“It’s the insides, it’s like, like the guts of the computer.” Stan settled for an explanation. “It’s like, fish guts, but for machines, so they’re not so squishy … usually. Like, like the memory chip I showed you. That was a component of my camera that stored memory.”

"Uh huh." Kyle held out his hands for the phone, and looked up to Stan for silent permission. Now how could he say no to that face? Stan held out his phone for Kyle to hold. “Don’t drop it,” Stan warned, though as the drunk one in this situation, he was probably far more likely to be the party that would drop his phone into the ocean. “Like I said, they stop working when they get wet. And I don’t think my mum’s gonna buy me a new one until Christmas.”

Kyle nodded like he understood what ‘Christmas’ was beyond a time where humans took holiday cruises en mass and took Stan’s phone with the care that one would handle a perfect snowflake. He looked at it in awe, expression changing to one of ecstasy when he pushed the home button and the screen lit up.

“Oh so that’s what that button does!” he said, giddy with excitement.

It was kind of adorable, how much the common things fascinated the mermaid. Stan grinned fondly, it was the simple things in life, the ordinary, and here was a mermaid marvelling at it as if it was the discovery of the century. He was finally smiling too. And it wasn’t a subdued reluctant smile like the one he gave earlier when Stan had first brought out his phone, but a full unrepentant smile that showed off teeth and dimpled his cheeks and crinkled his eyes that sparkled with wonderment. Stan was right, smiling was a good look for Kyle. And seeing him excited over things made a warm fluttering sensation start in his chest.

“Can you show me how it works?” Kyle asked excitedly. “I’ve never seen one up close that works!”

Momentarily shocked, Stan looked at Kyle in confusion. “Who, me?” he asked. “I dunno, I don’t exactly use everythin’ on my phone. I mostly use it to text people and take pics- pictures.”

He clarified when he saw Kyle’s confusion at the terminology.

“Show me?” Kyle asked eagerly. 

Stan looked down at the mermaid, who was holding the device close to his face, the light illuminating it from below. Kyle’s eyes flicked to the icons and words on the display, silently mouthing and sounding out new and exciting words and names on the screen. The kid was clearly enthralled and starving for knowledge. Stan might’ve not been the best source to ask from, but the mystery of these ‘gadget rectangles’ had eluded Kyle for so long he was looking for every scrap of information on the device that he could get. Stan smiled. “Sure. I can show you some pics” he said, taking his phone back and going through his files.

Kyle’s eyes stayed magnetically drawn to the screen, the light reflecting off his eyes. Stan risked a glance and Kyle was enraptured with the swipe transitions of the screen. Stan made to go straight to the phone’s camera app when his thumb hovered over the icon for a moment, thinking. “Actually, do you want to see a little video Heidi took yesterday?”

Kyle’s eyes snapped to him. “What?”

“When we met earlier today.” Stan explained. “There was a little party on the ship and the crew was playing a little song. Heidi, the ship nurse, took a video and shared it with everyone. I downloaded it from the group chat.”

He looked up at Stan eagerly. “A video? Are you in it?”

Stan shook his head. “No no, I wasn’t there. I went out on the boats to see you, so I couldn’t be there. They did this without me.”

“Oh. Is the song as good as yours then?” Kyle asked.

Stan stammered. “I mean- what? I’m not that great a singer.” He tried to brush it off. “It’s a good song. Of course it’s good! I don’t think it's better than mine. I mean it’s not like I’m a professional or anything.” He said. Stan played with the phone casing, fiddling with the corners trying not to think too hard on the thought that Kyle thought his music was good. “I’m not some great artist.” he murmured.

Kyle shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “Music is just so … human you know? It’s different. I like your music. We don’t have much music of our own back in town, I mean there’s not exactly a lot of options for instruments underwater as you may have guessed.” he admitted.

 _He likes my music._ Stan thought. Then the follow-up thought. _Hold your horses Stan, Kyle’s just never heard any_ good _music, he hasn’t had anything to compare your music to other than, I dunno whale songs?_ He tried not to be too put out that the only fan of his music was only a fan because Kyle had never listened to anything else. “I guess you haven’t.”

Stan shuffled closer to the edge of the boat and held the phone in his lap. “Come closer then,” he said. “It’s easier to see the screen that way.”

He heard a splash and Stan looked up, confused. Looking over, Stan didn’t see Kyle. However, Kyle’s whereabouts was quickly revealed when from below, the mermaid leapt out of the water and climbed his torso onto the boat, dripping water everywhere.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Budge over then,” Kyle said, practically elbowing Stan in the process of tucking his tail comfortably out from under him so that it trailed into the water from the edge of the boat. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’ve got a much bigger limb to torso ratio than you have and I don’t particularly fancy my arms going numb tonight hanging off the edge of your boat.”

Stan quickly made room in the boat, shuffling over the bench as the tiny boat complained at the shifting increase in weight as Kyle settled in. Kyle then leaned over Stan’s shoulder to peer at the tiny screen. Stan tried not to notice too much that the closeness meant that Kyle’s very cool, very close skin was warming off the heat radiating from Stan’s own body right next to his side as Stan pulled out the appropriate file and tried to speak in a calm, level voice. “Th-this is a video of what we call a sea shanty, it’s a type of song that usually gets sung when people are out at sea or the coast having a bit of a party.”

“Is it different from the songs I saw you sang before?” Kyle asked. 

Stan nodded. “Yeah, it’s almost like a folksy kind of song?”

Kyle looked at Stan blankly. “Stan I have no idea what the different kinds of music there are.”

“Right. Obviously.” Stan mumbled. “Here why don’t we just watch the video? It’s easier to see if you hear it for yourself rather than me trying to explain, it’s just a different kind of music.”

Stan offered the paused video on the phone out to Kyle and gestured for Kyle to touch the screen.

Kyle’s eyes lit up when the screen responded to his touch. “Oh!”

Heidi was one of those monsters who filmed things in portrait mode on her phone, and Stan would’ve apologised for it if Kyle knew any better, but fortunately, Kyle didn’t seem to mind the narrow screen and she corrected herself halfway through the video anyway. The quality left much to be desired as well, as the audio was riddled with static and the crackle pops of Heidi’s phone being fidgeted with as she tried to focus her phone as each participant of the video came to a particularly lively part of the performance, ultimately sacrificing her video’s audio in all the movement. From the tune, it sounded like the first half of The Mariner’s Revenge. You know the part of the song before the mother dies and the protagonist of the song wakes up naked. Stan could also hear Heidi’s voice cheering on Butters, Wendy, and on occasion the parrot, more distinctly than the song itself. Wendy’s flute pervaded the video while Butter’s slightly drawled out voice gave the song it’s life. Craig was disinterestedly providing percussion and the parrot whistled along to the tune and bobbed in time with the beat with Butters. All in all, it honestly looked like a fun time and Stan kind of wished he was there for it, but ultimately he wouldn’t have given up his meeting up with Kyle and Kenny, it was simply the meeting of a lifetime.

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sw61oITuts ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sw61oITuts)

When the video concluded, Stan rubbed the back of his head nervously. “They aren’t professionals by any means, but it’s just a fun little song. It’s not about sounding good, a sea shanty is for having fun while sounding relatively terrible. Like unranked karaoke but co-op.”

Kyle brushed off those unfamiliar terms and took to playing the video again, fascinated by the capabilities of Stan’s phone. Stan winced at the tinny sound coming from the speakers of the phone, he only wished Kyle could’ve heard the sound coming from some real quality stereo speakers, a mere facsimile of the real sound, but it also had a charming sort of amateur recording quality to it with all its imperfections. 

“And, you can just take these videos on cell phones? Any time, anywhere?” he asked.

“Sure can, look.” Stan took the phone back and motioned for Kyle to look at him.

Stan held up his phone to his face, a grin spreading across his tanned skin as he clicked off onto a new app. He shuffled back on the bench to get Kyle better in frame while Kyle pulled a face at his antics. He looked like he wanted to say something and started to lift his hand out to the lens to cover it up..

“Don’t worry, I’ll delete this clip.” Stan promised. “Come on, don’t you trust me?” Kyle looked on with a mix of wariness and skepticism, but let his hand rest on his lap as Stan seemed to swipe over the touch screen for a few seconds. Stan looked up at the preview of the video he was going to take, and hesitated whether he should… _Ah, screw it. What’s that saying?_ Stan thought. In for a penny in for a pound? Guess he’ll jump straight into showing Kyle the wonders of today’s technology. With that, he took a short three-second clip of Kyle looking dubiously at Stan’s phone with a dog face filter applied. He then tapped “preview video” and turned the device around for Kyle to see.

“See look, it’s you!”

Kyle looked taken aback. “Well, that was fast. Wait, the fuck is that on my face?” Kyle pulled a mildly off-put expression. “That’s not there, I think I’d notice if that was on my face. Why do I have dog ears stuck to my hair?”

Stan laughed. “No, no. That's not actually there. This is kind of like a sticker. A picture or a cartoon layered on top of your real picture.” he showed off the video preview switching between several other filter options. “It’s called a filter, it's how we make our videos more fun and interesting.”

“What am I not interesting enough to you already? I’m only a mermaid” said Kyle sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

Stan scoffed “Pfft, hah! You? Nah, you- you’re like a walking talking fis- mermaid filter.” Stan bit himself off, he almost said the _other_ f-word. 

“Naw, you’re plenty interesting! A real mythological creature, definitely more interesting.” Stan playfully reaffirmed. “Look, so the one I used was a dog filter, when you open your mouth a dog tongue comes out”

Stan switched the camera to take photos from the front of the phone rather than the back and posed like he was taking a selfie with the confounded mermaid. 

“See look, we have dog ears, and when you open your mouth a tongue comes out. It’s just a cartoon.”

Kyle did not look impressed. “All of the wonders of modern computers at your fingertips, and you choose to make filters to give yourselves cartoon dog ears and tongues in photos?”

“Yeah pretty much. That’s humans for ya.” Stan admitted.

Stan extended his arm from them both and cracked a cheesy grin. “Smile!”

Pulling back the phone to look at the result, Stan laughed. Kyle’s lips were pursed in an unamused expression like a grumpy bulldog while Stan was unabashedly grinning like a goofy labradoodle. Seemed about right, looks Kyle can be a bit of a stick in the mud, as Kenny had implied.

“Lighten up will ya? It’s cute.” Stan chortled.

“It’s stupid. You’re too easily amused. Delete it.” Kyle muttered. But he was fighting off a grin, Stan’s smile was contagious and he hated it. It was such a frivolous thing, but it made Stan peal with a disproportionate amount of laughter.

Stan only laughed harder at Kyle's pained looking face as he fought off the smile. “Oh come on Mr. I’m-Too-Good for this, you’re smiling. Let yourself smile, it’s a good picture.” 

Kyle’s expression only intensified and Stan fought off the urge to laugh again and instead schooled his face into something more reserved “Alright Kyle, calm down I’ll delete it. But only because you asked.” Stan said playfully winking as he deleted the picture.

* * *

Kyle blinked at the wink. Was that supposed to mean something? Kenny sometimes winked when he was saying something with a double meaning, but Stan didn’t sound like he was trying to trick Kyle, and he had promised he wouldn’t tell the world of the existence of mermaids. Kyle didn’t like to be confused, he liked knowing everything and being in control of the situation. Maybe Stan didn’t mean anything by it.

* * *

Kyle started when Stan’s phone buzzed, vibrating in his hand and making a soft ping.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down,” said Stan, holding his hands up. “It’s just a text alert.”

He held up the lit screen for Kyle to see the alert. “See? It just lets me know when someone sends me a message.”

“Wow, that’s actually really useful.” Kyle said. “There’s some practical application to your phone after all.”

“Yep. Convenience that fits in your pocket.” Stan opened up the message with a flourish. It was a text from Wendy, great. Stan bit his lip.

_Stan, why is Butters telling me you’re out on a boat at fucking 10pm? Get your ass back here before I tow you back, I can barely see you from here._

Shit, Wendy was looking at them? Could she see Kyle? Stan’s head whipped back in the direction of the deck of the ship. No, he decided, it was probably too dark to see out this far, even with binoculars Stan doubted Wendy could see he was out here with someone. Kyle’s gaze followed where Stan was looking.

On S.S Casa Bonita, there was a light clicking on and off from Wendy’s room. It looked to be morse code. Now, it might’ve been a while since Uncle Jimbo had taught Stan morse code back in the sixth grade, but he knew enough to recognise _C-O-M-E-B-A-C-K-B-I-T-C-H._

“Is that your friends calling you back?” Kyle guessed.

“Yeah,” Stan admitted, a little disappointed. A shame, he was just starting to really enjoy the conversation he was having, he had just broken the proverbial awkward ice with Kyle and had even gotten the mermaid smiling. But alas, it seemed all good things had to come to an end.

“Well you should probably get back to them then,” said Kyle. Stan didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but was that a touch of echoing wistfulness coming from Kyle? Stan decided to extend his metaphorical hand.

“You know, you’re pretty cool to talk to, we should do it again sometime,” he suggested.

Kyle blinked, looking a little hopeful. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Stan. “I mean only if you want to. And I can show you some other human stuff if you wanna know about it.”

Kyle’s eyes glittered with interest. “Really? That’d be sweet! Hell yeah, I’d like that. Your stuff is so fascinating! I’d be down to see you again.”

Stan smiled, “Cool, so it’s settled then. How about I see you again tomorrow morning?”

“Sure,” Kyle nodded. He hefted himself up to the side of the boat and wobbled a bit unsteadily, swaying against the motions of the tiny rowboat shifting with the shift in balance as all two(?) tons of Kyle shuffled to one end of the boat. He bunched his tail beneath him before launching off, entering the water with a splash! Stan reeled back from the opposing force of the boat rocking from the jump as Kyle resurfaced lazily, pulling the hair from his eyes.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

“Yeah, tomorrow.” Stan agreed.

Kyle then reached out, tapping Stan on the wrist. “Huh?” he asked.

“Could you … could you maybe bring that music-making string box next time? I liked the way it sounds.” Kyle requested. He looked at the grain of the wood of Stan’s boat as he said this, as if fascinated and unable to look Stan in the eyes as he requested it.

Stan thought about what Kyle could mean for a moment. “You mean my guitar?” Stan asked. “Sure I can, I can even play a song if you’d like.”

“That’d be cool, thanks Stan.” Kyle said, looking relieved. He tapped the side of the boat with his hand, like a reassuring pat. “I’ll come find you, when in the morning do you think you can get away from the other humans?”

Stan thought to himself for a moment. “How about right before the sun rises? Like five-thirty? It’ll be cold and early enough that no one will want to be on the deck of the ship to spot you, or hear me when I play. That sound good?”

Kyle nodded. “Sounds great, I’ll see you there ok?”

Stan smiled. “Sure, see you dude.”

With that, Kyle sank discretely back into the water, the last Stan seeing of him being his luminescent eyes looking back up at Stan’s boat from the deep. Stan was smiling the whole way back onto the deck of the S.S Casa Bonita, he was so giddy with excitement, he almost didn’t feel the cold as the nightly chill bit at him.

He hoisted the boat back to the ship with some help from Butters, and Stan tied off the boat and bid Butters goodnight as he made his way to the lab so Wendy could stop flashing her lights.

“So what’s out there at this time of night that’s put you in such a good mood?” Wendy asked when he walked in.

“Oh nothing, Wends, it just was a nice night out is all,” he said elusively.

“Are you for real?” she asked. “Stan, it’s the middle of the fucking night! What could’ve been so important that you’d risk drowning where no one would see you?”

“Wendy calm down I wore a life jacket.” Stan tried to brush off. Wendy rolled her eyes. “Oh cause that makes it all ok then does it? You’d still get pneumonia! What if you fell in and we left you behind? Just because you have a life jacket doesn’t make you impervious to drowning, it just means you’d drown a lot more slowly!” she said, “So fess up, what were you doing Stan?”

“Nothing! I’m serious Wendy, I really was out just clearing my head you know?” Stan brushed off. Shit, he’d have to start being a lot more careful around Wendy.

“Stan, even I know you’re not that much of a blunderhead to think that going out in the dead of the night is a good idea.” she then paused, sniffing. “Wait, do I smell alcohol? Have you been drinking again Stan?” Wendy asked, accusatory.

“What? No!” Stan deflected.

“Oh my god you have, What the fuck Stan, I thought you gave up on that habit!” she yelled

“I’m trying Wendy!” Stan said back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, ok? It’s just sometimes I start getting a headache from what a pain Cartman can be and I needed something to take the edge off.”

Stan was horrified when Wendy started to cry. “No, no Wendy please don’t cry. I’m sorry.” He hated it when he made Wendy cry, it was the worst part when they were still together.

“Give it here Stan.” She said, holding out her hand. “I told you I don’t want you hurting yourself making dumb choices like the stunt you just pulled tonight because you can’t think straight when you’re drunk!”

Stan gritted his teeth. “Look Wends, it won’t happen again.”

“Exactly.” She said. “It won’t happen again, so give it to me. Where are you keeping it Stan? Is it in your room?”

“No!” he cried, she couldn’t find his stash. “Look I went out tonight for some privacy to drink alright? I’m sorry.” Stan held out the flask from his jacket.

Wendy took it and gave it a quick shake, frowning. “It’s almost empty Stan.” 

He looked down with shame. “Yeah, I know.”

Wendy’s face softened. “Look, I know I’m being the bad buy here, but this is for your own good and you know it. Your family has a history of alcoholism, and we both don’t want you turning into either your dad, or your grandpa.”

“I know.” Stan said softly. “You’re just looking out for me Wends, I know.”

She nodded. “Good, thank you for giving this to me Stan.”

Stan was floored by the sense of guilt as Wendy walked away with his flask to confiscate. He didn’t want to end up like his dad, he didn’t. Alcoholism was a driving force between his parents that was a main factor, if not the main reason for their ultimate divorce. It had wrecked Stan, wanting to love his father but also hating him at the same time for choosing the bottle over his loved ones. He didn’t want to end up like that. He loved the people he loved. But he wasn’t ready to let Wendy put him under a dry spell, he would get there he swore, but not today, not on this trip. Stan made his way to his room and checked under the stack of jeans that hid his stash. He breathed out a sigh of relief. Wendy hadn’t raided his room. He felt bad for abusing Wendy’s trust like this, but he’d make it up to her by getting clean. For real this time. Just … not today, he decided. It would happen. Just not today.


	8. The Great Breakup Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan shows off to Kyle the song he wrote when he broke up with Wendy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, an early update! It must be that Easter magic! Hope everyone's staying safe these days, you'd think being under self-isolation lockdown I'd write/draw more but here we are. In any case here's a dose of Goth Stan where I did my best to turn his break up poem into a song that wasn't too vague and generic and weird. I tried writing it in iambic pentameter like a sonnet or something but that's so hard and not necessarily rolled off as natural lyrics so I kinda winged it at the end. I am not a songwriter so forgive me if it reads terribly. I kinda imagined the song as set to the music the Goth Kids listen to in Stick of Truth, those fake goth music tracks. Look em up if you want a better idea as to Stan's music only set to acoustic guitar cause Stan doesn't have the right set up for electric.

Morning came with a rosy pink tint as the moon made a slow descent below the distant skyline. A soft pinging sounded from his phone rousing Stan from sleep. Stan had rolled into bed and promptly passed out last night, aided by the Russian vodka. Thus it was inevitable that he groaned as he awoke with the worst hangover he’s had in months. It felt all the more excruciating when you consider that Stan hadn’t gotten properly drunk in weeks, having unhappily rationed out every drinking experience onboard the S.S Casa Bonita to ‘bare buzz’ rather than ‘blackout drunk.’

There was a dull throbbing behind Stan’s eyes that coincided with the gentle rocking of the boat, while his mouth felt like it had a fuzzy texture to it and tasted like something had crawled inside to die.

“Oh god I did _not_ fucking miss this,” Stan grunted, pulling himself from the warm cocooned refuge of his blankets. His hair was sticking up every which way and he tried to smooth it down roughly. “The fuck did I set my alarm before the asscrack of dawn for?”

He glared blearily at the display on his phone as it continuously pinged at him to wake up. The glowing white numbers informed him it was five-thirty in the morning, far too early for anyone to be legally out of bed. He rubbed his eyes in an attempt to alleviate the headache he was sporting as he thumbed through his reminders on his phone.

“Five-forty-five, meet Kyle on the deck. Wait what?” Stan started, dropping the covers on the floor as he reread the message. Fuck, that can’t be right can it? Stan went through his memories of last night, recollecting their last encounter. Memory-Him’s voice filtered through his head _“How about right before the sun rises? Like five-thirty? It’ll be cold and early enough that no one will want to be on the deck of the ship.”_ before he dropped his phone on his bed with alarm. Fuck, he was an idiot. Idiot drunk him didn’t consider that _‘no one will want to be on the deck of the ship_ ’ might include himself. Especially his post hangover self, whose existence was miserable enough without adding cold and irritable drowsiness to the mix.

Groaning to himself that he’d have to actually get out of bed, Stan started dressing himself, multi-tasking to the best of his hangover’s ability meaning that while pulling on a shirt and socks he had a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth and misbuttoned his jacket twice. He distantly recalled that Kyle was expecting him to play something for him; so Stan also grabbed his guitar, pausing before picking up a fresh flask on the way out the door. If Stan was stupid enough to schedule a morning meeting with a mermaid Stan can be stupid enough to try cure a hangover with alcohol. As he tiptoed his way past the other bedrooms into the kitchen, Stan started fixing together his father’s famous hangover cure. Two raw eggs blended with a quart of prune juice and a dash of apple cider vinegar. The disgusting concoction crawled down his throat, chasing away the taste of Satan’s asshole from his throat with a fresh taste of just ass.

Successfully managing to not gag, Stan was just packing up his impromptu breakfast when he spotted Butters in the hallway. Butter’s seemed to pop up everywhere Stan went on the ship these days, but it kinda made sense with him as the deckhand and all Stan mused.

"Oh good morning Stan, did ya have a good sleep?" 

"Butters? The hell are you doing here?" Stan asked. He quickly kicked his guitar behind the table, obscuring it from view.

Butters sagged as he started fiddling with the hem of his jacket. "Oh well, I got a problem, Stan.”

Softening, Stan placed a comforting hand on Butter’s shoulder. “What is it Butters? What’s wrong?” 

For the first time, Stan noted Butters looked like he hadn’t slept much last night. His eyes had bags underneath, which was uncharacteristic of him as Butters was practically the embodiment of ‘sleeping like a baby’ if Stan ever saw one. His hair was unkempt and frazzled. His red-rimmed eyes were watery and gooey looking as they teared up. His fingernails looked bitten and worn. Butters shifted from foot to foot and sniffled. “It's p-poor Polly," he said as he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands.

Stan tilted his head in confusion, "Who?"

"Polly." Butters pointed behind him with his thumb. Stan looked behind him and noticed the slightly scruffy looking birdcage that Butters was evidently in the process of cleaning. In it was Cartman's green parrot.

"The parrot? Is there something wrong with it? "

"Him," Butters pointedly clarified. 

"Him," Stan agreed. "Of course. I meant to say, `Is there something wrong with him?’" Had Butters seriously named the parrot Polly? Stan thought. It was both endearing and so typical.

"Well to be h-honest I'm not sure," Butters said sadly. "He normally sings ‘Lulu Apples’ with me when he wakes up in the morning, but today he won’t sing at all. I think he must not be feeling well." The parrot in question fluffed up his feathers and clambered up the knotted rope hanging from the roof of the cage.

“Is he sick?" Stan asked.

"No, I don't think so,” Butters admitted. “As you can see, he's actually still pretty lively. His eyes are all clear and his feathers look healthy. I just can't seem to find anything wrong with him but he won’t sing now," said Butters dejectedly.

"And this started this morning yeah?” Stan took a look at the parrot himself. He was hanging upside down playfully gnawing on the black bars of his cage. Polly looked healthy enough as far as his untrained eye could tell. If Butters wasn’t so hung up on the bird’s waking habits, Stan would have brushed off the parrot as being perfectly fine. 

“Yeah, just this morning.”

Stan pursed his lips and turned the cage slightly, startling the bird who let out an indignant squawk, flapping as his home was rotated around abruptly. “Well, like you said Butters I can’t see anything wrong with him,” said Stan. “Do you think maybe nothing's wrong with him and he's just tired from last night? You guys stayed up pretty late singing sea shanties didn’t you?”

“Well, I suppose,” Butters replied, thinking it over. He dried his eyes on his sleeves. “But what if it’s something really serious Stan?”

The bird looked fine, Stan wanted to scoff. It wasn’t like, coughing or limping. Surely Butters was worrying too much. He always did that whenever someone came to school feeling under the weather back in the day. “Well, I’m no bird expert, but he looks dandy to me,” he replied. Stan went to leave but he noticed Butters was still looking distressed. They didn’t exactly have a vet on board, but, “Maybe you could ask Heidi about it?"

Butters looked up at him and Stan explained, "I know she's a nurse and not a vet or anything, but maybe she'll have something you can give him if Polly is sick." 

Butters brightened up at this. “Yeah, yeah maybe you're right Stan. I should ask Heidi." 

Stan nodded encouragingly and lifted the birdcage, transferring it into Butter’s arms. "Sure I am! I'm sure once Heidi gives him a look he'll be back to himself and singing ‘Lulu Apples’ with you until the sun goes down dude."

"Aw, gee shucks thanks Stan," Butters said, fumbling with the cage slightly. "But I think I'd kill myself if I had to listen to ‘Lulu Apples’ that many times over. I think he'd sing all sorts of other songs with me when he's feeling more like hisself."

"Of course dude," Stan reassured.

Then, Butters cocked his head, seemingly realising how odd it actually was he ran into Stan at this hour. "Not that I don't 'ppreciate you being here Stan, but what are you doing here this early in the morning?"

Stan looked around quickly. "Oh you know, just thought I'd go uh… “ he looked around quickly for inspiration. The kitchen was pretty sparse, a fruit bowl sat lonely in the corner, there was a talking fish gizmo fixed on the wall. “Fishing." Stan finished.

"Fishing?" Butters asked, puzzled. 

Stan nodded. "Yeah. My Uncle Jimbo always told me the best time to fish is in the morning when the fish haven't had their breakfast yet, and the evening when they haven't had their dinner. It’s the times the fish get the hungriest, as my Uncle Jimbo always told me."

Butters nodded. "That's what I heard from my dad too! But I thought I was supposed to fish for dinner today, did Eric change the chores again?”

"No he didn't, but I just thought it was a nice day for fishing don’tcha think? I think I can handle fishing food for us today. Plus," Stan paused, "this works out nicely, doesn’t it? This way you get extra time off to tend to Polly. 

Butters smiled with understanding. "Oh, that's true!" 

"So you go back to helping Polly feel better okay? Don't worry about the fishing, I’ll do it for tonight."

"Oh geez, thanks Stan," Butters said gratefully. He gently cooed at Polly who squawked back at him cheerily.

"I think I will go talk to Heidi when she wakes up, thanks for the carin’ ‘bout little ol’ Polly Stan." He rummaged in one of the cupboards for a bit. “I got some leftover fish guts from Wendy yesterday to use as bait, and make sure you use the good lures you hear? I put those in the red box. And the line shouldn’t be tangled, but it never hurts to check. The reel could do with a bit of a polish, it creaks.” Butters pulled out the fishing equipment and piled it all into Stan’s arms. Stan tried not to stagger from the sudden influx of stuff. “O-oh. Gee thanks Butters.”

“Well, that’s about everything I fish with, best of luck to ya Stan!” Butters then spun on his heel and practically skipped back to his room, towing the parrot cage with him and Stan thanked whatever deity was looking over him that Butters was the only one awake at this hour. He unloaded his armfuls of fishing gear into his pack, picked up his guitar from the ground, hurried his way past Eric's room and finally made his way onto the deck. He was already running late.

When Stan opened the door into the frigid morning air, he wasn't quite sure what he was expecting. The moon was just winking its last goodbyes and the sun was rising from the East, bringing with it the warmth that would banish the morning dew. The wind whistled harshly, throwing Stan’s hair into his eyes and his jacket billowed around him dramatically. Stan set his pack to the ground and checked his phone. Five fifty, if Kyle had made good on his promise he couldn’t have given up waiting yet, could he? Stan looked out into the water for any signs of life. He didn’t see any mermaids, but was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar blob of whitish wax bobbing on the surface. Stan frowned. Was it another chunk of ambergris? Didn't Wendy say this stuff was really hard to find? His curious scientific mind couldn’t let this find pass, and so Stan rummaged in the pack sorting through the mess of rods and boxes of lures. He’d apologise to Leo later for tangling all his meticulously wound up fishing line and brought out the battered butterfly style fishing net in triumph. Stan walked up to the edge of the railing and leaned over the top, reaching down to the limits of his arm span and fished out the little blob of ambergris, bagging it. "Another sample for Dr. Testaburger's findings, Wendy will be happy with this." Stan self-commentated. He looked around but he still had no half-human half cetacean audience. Frowning, Stan called out.

"Kyle?" he peered over the boat’s edge into the opaque water. "Sorry I’m late, I'm here now, where are you?" 

He heard a splash and Stan quickly glanced to where he thought the source was. There in the water, to the north of the boat, a fin breached the surface of the water some feet away. It sliced through the waves effortlessly, standing tall and rigid like the fin of a shark. However, what gave it away, was the painted mottled reds and dark greys that no shark Stan had ever seen before patterning it’s skin. The fin then submerged itself into the water, and not a moment too soon later Kyle emerged, water sluicing over his form in a crystalline shower with a grin on his face.

"About freaking time dude, what held you up? The sun's gonna come up fully any minute now."

Kyle’s side fins flapped in rapid succession in greeting, flicking water playfully from his tail to splash Stan on the deck. It nailed Stan in the face giving him an expected saltwater face bath. Stan snapped his mouth closed, unimpressed as he spat out the water in a thin stream and blinked the stinging from his eyes. “Did you have to get me wet first thing in the morning?”

“You’re welcome,” Kyle replied cheekily, pleased with himself. He swam in a little circle in what Stan supposed was the mermaid’s version of a smug bow and Stan smiled despite himself.

The merman was as brilliant as Stan remembered, The eerie pink morning light-tinted Kyle pink all over, giving his greyish skin a rouge sort of look. His grin was infectious and Stan found himself echoing the mad grin. They must have made quite a sight, with Stan’s jacket epically flapping in the wind and Kyle’s head of wildfire hair frizzing untamed as the ocean breeze wailed around them.

"Sorry again for being late." Stan apologised, using his shirt to wipe away the droplets. He was really sick of wiping salt water from his eyes, but he supposed he really ought to get used to getting splashed on if he was going to be making friends with a mermaid. 

"I ran into Butters on the way here and I told him I came out here to fish. He's gone now though so he won't interrupt us any time soon."

Kyle looked puzzled. "You told him you came out here to fish, using that?” Kyle gestured to the mess of rods and line Stan had left on the deck, it was all but unusable now and Stan groaned.into his hands. "Shit. Fuck, I need to fix this. If I come back with nothing for breakfast Wendy's gonna kill me." 

Kyle shook his head. "No, don't worry about it. I got your back. You came out here for me, I'll catch something to make it up to you easy. What kind of fish are you looking for?" 

Stan was already shaking his head. "No way dude, you don't gotta do that for me."

Kyle shook his head again and insisted "Don't worry about it, I want to." he swam closer to the deck of the S.S Casa Bonita, and he inspected his claws offhandedly. "Come on man, tell me what fish you want or I swear I'll dump a giant squid on your deck."

Stan paled. "No way, you wouldn't. "

Kyle looked up and gave a confident, challenging smirk. "What? You don't think I could? Just try me."

Stan gave Kyle a significant look. If Stan had to garner an educated guess, he would say that the closest genus of cetacean Kyle's aquatic side seemed to resemble was a cross between a sperm whale and a humpback whale. His tail had the robust torpedo build of a sperm whale while his fins and flukes were elongated and rugged, almost frilled like those of a humpback. And Stan knew all too well that sperm whales were one of the species notorious for regularly hunting giant squid. 

Stan pursed his lip. "Fine. If you wanna show off so bad, I'm probably gonna be looking to get some deep-sea fish. Like a perch or cod.” He pulled a face. "Preferably something not too bony so Cartman doesn't choke on it when he sneaks some at night. He's always bitchy after he's spent a night choking." 

Kyle nodded. "OK perch and cod. That's easy enough. I was worried you were gonna say something stupid like a shark."

Stan started. "What? No way dude, that's twisted I wouldn't eat a shark. They get it bad enough from shark fin soup connoisseurs."

Kyle nodded sagely. "Good choice, shark tastes rank. Hunted a shark with Kenny once for a dare. It was _so_ not worth it and Kenny almost died to boot." Stan honestly couldn't tell if Kyle was joking or not. 

Stan then pulled up his guitar with a flourish and grinned. “Hey, look what I brought.”

Kyle's eyes lit up, drawn to Stan's hand. "Hey, you brought the music maker!" 

"Yep! Told you I wouldn't forget." Stan strummed the strings happily, showing off the sound. He looped the strap over his shoulder and pulled up the lounge chair usually occupied by Cartman when he could be bothered to station himself on the deck. "Want me to play you a song?"

"I thought you'd never ask," said Kyle. 

Stan had just started strumming his guitar to all too familiar chords about hybrid cars when he noticed Kyle was fidgeting. “What’s wrong?”

Kyle hesitated for a moment before asking, "Do … Do you think you can play a different song this time?”

“A different song?”

“Yeah,” Kyle said sheepishly. “After seeing that video on your cell phone last night, I had a think about what you said, about there being different kinds of music? And I was thinking that maybe I’d like to hear the different kinds of music you were talking about. If it’s not too much trouble.” Kyle quickly added.

Stan froze, at a loss momentarily. He hadn't really planned on playing anything in advance, and now Kyle wanted to hear some _variety?_ Talk about putting him on the spot. Kyle saw his hesitation.

“You don't have to,” Kyle quickly amended. “It’s not fair of me to ask out of the blue, I know. You can play whatever you like. Chances are it'll be cool just the same.”

“Nah nah, I can play something different,” Stan reassured. “What kind of music do you wanna hear?”

Kyle thought for a moment. “Well, what do humans play music for?” he asked, curious.

Stan let out a thoughtful hum. “Well, music is a form of expression I guess.” he settled on. “People play music for celebration, to express happiness, they play music when they’re feeling sad or angry too. People play music as an outlet to how they feel.”

Kyle looked fascinated. “Yeah, I think I see it. The sea shanty song from the video wasn't quite … happy wasn’t it?”

Stan nodded. “That’s right. The sea shanty that Butters and the other guys sang was more melancholy. A sort of sad happiness. Sometimes songs can be used to tell stories.”

“Do you know a song that tells a story?” Kyle asked, curious.

“Um, I guess?” Stan rubbed the back of his neck. “I wrote a song about the time Wendy and I broke up.”

Swimming closer, Kyle looked up at Stan with eager eyes. “Can I hear it?”

Stan looked dubious. “Are you sure? It’s not exactly a happy song either.”

Kyle nodded. “I want to hear all kinds of music, I don’t mind if it’s sad.” he then paused, realising something. “Oh, is the song very personal? If it’s about you breaking up with someone I guess it’s none of my business.”

Stan shook his head. “Nah, nah. Don’t be sorry. It’s probably good for me to talk about it. I haven’t really talked about it with anyone else, and I haven’t played the song for anyone yet, so it’s about time someone heard something I’ve been writing.” While it was a little, _personal,_ to share this song with Kyle, Stan felt he could. He and Kyle had only just met a few days ago, they had no social obligations to one another. Kyle couldn’t judge him over the song the same way someone he’d known since elementary school could after seeing Stan pine after Wendy for all these years. It was refreshing to have someone impersonal listen objectively to such a personal song. Especially such an eager audience. Kyle positively glowed with the opportunity to hear new music, regardless of subject matter or tone.

Stan awkwardly strummed a few chords to get a feel for the song while Kyle settled in patiently. His attention was enraptured in Stan’s gentle tinkering of the guitar strings. Stan let out a slow breath, attempting to steady his voice for the words as they escaped in an angsty yet soulful tune.

Stan wasn’t very aware of it, but when he sang his voice took on a more throaty, soft melodic lilt. It made him sound more empathetic or “sappy” as Cartman would put it. It was different during his teen years where he had a brief screamo stint but Stan changed his tune when Wendy had said she liked this version of Stan’s singing better. It was a song about unequal love, where the singer was expecting more out of the relationship than the receiver of the song. It was sad and romantic, in that they were doomed from the start but he had enjoyed the ride to the edge all the same. It wasn’t a happy song, but Stan was glad he wrote about it. Stan’s voice trailed off, dragging out the last words the way he wanted to hold on to that feeling of happiness that Wendy had made him feel during their time together. Stan was a lovesick sap, he couldn’t help it, that was just the way he was. He felt happiest when he felt loved. And now that they had broken up, it was like a fundamental part of him had gone cold. When all was quiet and Kyle was looking at him silently, Stan got nervous. He tried to laugh off the last vestiges of the somber song. “Sorry if I kinda killed the mood there. See, I warned you the song was sad. It’s kinda stupid how much I care. I mean it's all done now and I should just get over it. Kinda shows what a pathetic mess I am, still missing her.”

Kyle snapped out of his reverie and quickly shook his head. “Look Stan, I don’t know you all that well, but I can tell you right now from what I’ve seen you’re not a pathetic mess. You’re dealing with it and trying to move on with your life and making music is just part of your process, and that’s really mature. Some people don’t deal with pain nearly as well as you do, and they can lash out and hurt others. Or wallow in static, never moving on. You aren’t pathetic at all.”

Stan appreciated Kyle trying to reassure him, even if he felt a little like he was being treated with kid gloves. But Stan kind of liked the reassurance. He’d had a lot of “tough love” from his dad trying to get him to “man up.” So it was a nice contrast to have someone legitimize his feelings, tell him it was ok to deal with things the way he did and not in a “manly way.” 

”Thanks man. Did you like the song at least? Like, objectively speaking.”

Kyle hmmed for a bit. “It was definitely different. It wasn’t drawly like the shanty, kinda more rhythmic and structured. But it was still sad and pleasant at the same time. It was nice in its own way, definitely angsty.” Kyle’s brow furrowed again, deep in thought. “It sounded a bit weird near the end though, almost incomplete. I noticed a pattern with the word beats, it felt off in the end but I can’t put my finger on it.”

 _Ah, so he noticed._ “That’s because it’s actually not a hundred percent finished,” Stan admitted.

“It’s not?”

“No.” Stan strummed the last verse again. “Rhyme schemes usually work in couplets, like ABAB or ABBA or AABB. Of course, not all songs follow rhyme schemes exactly, but I find it easier to write. You can tell the last verse goes AABBAA, then CC. It’s not a full quartet. I was never sure how to end the song. It just doesn’t sound final enough you know? It’s not satisfying enough.”

Kyle thought for a little bit. “Okay, so then you only need two more lines for a full couplet, right?”

“Right,” Stan reaffirmed, glad Kyle was getting it. “To be honest I’ve been stuck on this for a while now and these last two lines have been torturing me for weeks. I just haven’t managed to write the lyrics to match the rest of the song.” 

Kyle hesitated. “Now, I know I could be overstepping my bounds here, and I’m not the best with English, and it’s not like I know exactly what you’ve gone through,” he started off, “but I’ve been studying language for a while, and you pick up on a few things when it comes to word patterns, how do these lyrics sound?”

Kyle started softly reciting a new couplet of lyrics in the same beat as Stan’s song. He refrained from outright singing the lyrics, instead opting for a more spoken-word style recital, but Stan rectified this oversight by playing the chords in time to Kyle leading the tune. Kyle’s voice wavered, not expecting to be a participant in Stan’s composing, so Stan joined in to encourage him and lead the verse by adding his voice to the melody. When it came to an end, Stan sat up with excitement “Hey, I think that works Kyle, it’s perfect!”

Stan started from the top of the song with the revised lyrics, singing a lot more loudly and transitioning between old and new lyrics seamlessly. Kyle tapped his fingers on the side of the S.S Casa Bonita to the beat of the song as he mouthed along, sounding out and practicing the English words on his tongue.

Stan bobbed his head to the music, feeling the rhythm of the song to his very core. Kyle bobbed along following Stan’s lead. He didn’t have the greatest sense of rhythm, but he enjoyed seeing Stan so passionate about the song he’d just finished. It truly felt like Stan was sharing a part of his heart with this song, some intimate part of him he’d chosen to expose and Kyle was privileged enough to witness. Kyle felt he could listen to Stan’s voice to the background of gentle strumming of guitar strings forever.

“Stan?” a new voice broke through the impromptu jam session.

“Oh shit,” Stan whispered. He abruptly set down his guitar and looked up to see Wendy coming up from the cabins. Stan quickly turned to warn Kyle to make himself scarce. But when he looked, there was already no trace of the red-headed mermaid to be seen. Kyle had seemingly escaped without detection. Stan looked back and tried to lean casually against the ship railing, the picture of casual disinterest.

“Hey, Wendy. What are you doing up?”

She cocked an eyebrow. “I’m in charge of the kitchen, I’m getting up to make breakfast before everyone else got up. Or rather before I _thought_ everyone else was getting up.” 

Her eyes narrowed shrewdly “What are _you_ doing on the deck? Who were you talking to?” she asked. 

“No one,” Stan fibbed. “I was just finishing my song.” he finished more truthfully. Well semi-truthfully. He was simply omitting Kyle’s presence. Stan gestured demonstrably at his guitar which was now strategically slung across his shoulders from the aforementioned jam session.

“Really?" asked Wendy in that wry voice of hers. "By yourself? I thought I heard voices.” Wendy put her hands on her hips, in a ‘don’t fuck with me’ kind of stance.

Stan rolled his eyes, “Uh, no duh Wendy, singing usually uses voices.”

Wendy looked unimpressed with the lie. “Uh-huh. And I’m sure your singing usually needs to take place at the asscrack of dawn as well. Why’re you out here ‘playing’ at this hour, what exactly is the ‘song’ about Stan?” she asked, air quotes implied, like she was seriously doubting his cover story. Okay, so her bullshit meter was clearly spiking through the roof, but Stan still couldn’t tell her about Kyle under any circumstances. He had to think of a reason for his secrecy, and fast.

“Um,” Stan nervously shuffled. “Okay look I didn’t … I didn’t want people overhearing my new song … I didn’t want _you_ overhearing my song cause it was about us okay?”

Wendy blinked, clearly not expecting that answer. “Huh?”

Stan lightly strummed the opening chords. “Remember this song? I started it when we were talking about ending it remember? When I-”

“When you went through your goth phase, yeah I remember,” Wendy finished for him. Now she looked remorseful, remembering the self-pitying poetry Stan had waxed on for before committing the words into early lyrics when he started drafting the song.

“Oh, I’m sorry Stan, I understand if you didn’t want anyone- me, from hearing that song, it’s so personal.”

“It’s okay Wendy, I’m not upset,” he reassured. Then Stan gave a small smile. “I actually just finished the song this morning, do you wanna hear it?”

“Really? You want me to hear it?” Wendy asked. She looked so unsure of herself. After all, she was the reason Stan wrote such a song in the first place, and it might just make them upset over the break up all over again, even if they both agreed it was still the best.

“If you’ll lend me your ear,” Stan replied. “I don’t mind. It’s the song about us after all, it’s probably only right that you hear it too. Sorry if I got anything wrong.”

“No, this is your music Stan, you can write whatever you like. I would like to hear it.” Wendy said.

Wendy stood by silently, listening intently to Stan’s finished song and clapped at the end when it was all over. 

“Oh Stan that was perfect, congratulations on finally finishing that song!”

Stan smiled as he began packing away his guitar. “Thanks, Wends, it feels good to finally have finished it. It only took me almost a whole year.”

“And it was _so_ worth it Stan,” Wendy passed Stan his bag but frowned when she felt the weight in it. “Hang on, what’ve you got in here?”

Stan looked over in a panic, worried she had found his fresh, hidden flask of vodka and that he was about to get the tongue lashing of a lifetime. Or worse yet, that she was looking at something that might’ve given away his meeting with Kyle. Not that he could think of anything that could’ve incriminated him, he had his flask safely tucked in his jacket pocket as always and his phone with the reminder to meet Kyle had alerts turned off. However, he relaxed when all Wendy pulled out was the sample bag of ambergris he had fished out of the water earlier that morning.

"Oh, that. I found that this morning. Cool coincidence huh? Thought you might want to have a look at it so I bagged it.”

“What, you just found it in the water, just like that?” Wendy's interrogation was instantly diverted in favour of more scientifically stimulating events.

Wendy took the bagged sample out of Stan’s pack, examining the globule of hardened wax. It was smaller than the previous batch, but just as pristine white and perfect. Another high-grade sample. 

“What the fuck, Stan, some people go years without finding any, and you've found another piece of the stuff in the same week?”

Stan only shrugged, it was a weird coincidence for sure, but that was all it was. Coincidence. 

"What can I say? I guess I'm just lucky.".

“I’ll say,” she said, tucking the bag away for proper laboratory analysis. 

“Good thing I was out here this morning right? Anyone else and they might have missed it entirely, not everyone on this ship is a marine biologist after all.” said Stan, he gave a half hearted huff of humour, a bit like an aborted laugh.

“Yeah, if it were Butters I’m sure he’d have just dismissed it as some stray pumas rock or something no doubt.” Wendy agreed. She then frowned. “Actually, have you seen Butters this morning? Isn’t he supposed to be fishing again today?”

“Oh, I told him I’d do the fishing today. Since I was out here early anyway,” Stan explained. “He gave me all his gear and told me to have at it.”

Wendy pointed to a corner of the ship behind him. “And that’s your catch?”

“Yeah- wait what?” Stan whirled around looking at the other side of the boat. 

There, on the deck of the ship, was a spread of fish set out. They were so fresh, several were still gasping for air and flopping on the deck where they lay.

Wendy looked at Stan expectantly.

“... Yes?”

* * *

Stan’s song: Lost Her 

_Hollow my heart, where love used to be._

_Hollow my soul, without you with me_

_Dark all around, when you were my light._

_I was a coward but for you I would fight._

_Though our paths crossed, they could not wind_

_Then came the day, when you left me behind_

_When we were young, you carried my scars_

_Now I'm a man but you were the stars._

_For what kind of a man, would I have to be_

_If I held you behind so selfishly_

_I knew in my heart I had to let you go_

_I was your man but you were my soul_

_Cause you're gonna go far love, you're gonna go far_

_I'll be right here love, that love will always be ours._

_You meant the world to me and I thought we’d be forever_

_But you knew before me that our time was over_

_Then came the time when we had to part_

_But I'll always thank you for stealing my heart._

_Lungs on fire, cause I'm hardly breathing_

_A crux on my chest cause my heart is breaking_

_The pain I felt, feels like it was everlasting_

_I miss you with my heart, I can't stop shaking_

_The dark and black emptiness through my heart is piercing._

_When you left my side I felt my knees start quaking_

_What I would give to hold you one last time_

_Only once with you I lied, when I said I was fine_

_I knew I would love you ‘till the end of the line_

_I was never yours but you were always mine._

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No scene drawing today, unfortunately, I have to remind myself not every chapter has to come with art but I had nowhere else to really put this so have a sketch of Wendy.


End file.
